Past
Grantees

WYATT MCDILL, Minneapolis, MN, received support of $10,000 for Garbage, a short narrative about life in a disposable society. The life portrayed is a character's named Mouse, a solitary garbage man. Disposable society is manifested everywhere around him, most literally in the garbage he collects and creates, but also in the ubiquitous advertisements he sees, in the consumable TV programs he watches and in the forgettable break-room chatter of his co-workers.

The Jerome Foundation made its first grant to choreographer DEAN MOSS in 1998. A second proposal, submitted through the fiscal sponsorship of the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, requested funding for the creation and performance of a new work titled American Deluxe. Funding of $16,000 over two years was authorized. Moss blends dance, text, music, electronic and other visual media to create intricate performance and video works. In American Deluxe, he will focus on the assimilation of multiple philosophies that define culture in an ever-widening experience of the world; and the effect of that assimilation on transgressive, violent and transcendent elements in American social behavior. Moss intends to establish a dialogue between a world sustained through the sacrifice of blood and a world defined as the functioning of a mind.

THE FIELD, a New York City-based service organization supporting the work of independent artists, served as fiscal agent/sponsor for a proposal from TERE OCONNOR DANCE. The Jerome Foundation Directors awarded a two-year grant of $24,000 to The Field in support of the development and production of new work in 1999. Tere OConnor Dance was founded in 1987. OConnor challenges the boundaries of dance through a dense eclectic movement style filled with reference and nuance, and a fierce commitment to encountering stark emotional territory. His persistent themes include the unveiling of an inner emotional dialogue, and the frailty and nobility of an individual life accented by a frequently hilarious sense of humor. Funds will primarily support a new evening-length work in which OConnor continues to develop a synthesis of language and movement. The predominant themes are the changes in human nature provoked by technology, and the way that personal anger grows into political fervor.

Performance Space 122, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for independent choreographer Cynthia Oliver, received a grant of $10,000 toward the development and production of a new work entitled SHEMAD. Oliver's new work will utilize the mythologies behind madness and women, address methods that are designed to manage women who are "certifiably" mad by the standards of the day, and will explore the ways in which categories of speech are employed to determine women who do not behave as mad.

GREG PAK received a grant for Brother Killer Wolf, a feature-length documentary that tells the stories of several very different Americans whose lives are intertwined with wolves, including: members of the Nez Perce tribe, who manage the Idaho wolf reintroduction program; a wolf trapper in Alaska; a cattle rancher dealing with wolf depredation; a biologist studying a wolf pack; an activist involved in the save-the-wolf campaign; and a suburban owner of a wolf-dog hybrid.

The Jerome Foundation authorized a grant of $10,000 to the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal agent for choreographer JELENA PETROVIC. Petrovic will use the funds to create and present new, larger ensemble work in 1999. One will be a duet with dancer Eric Boone, focusing on partnering in a complex physical vocabulary. She'll create a second section for a duet titled We Begin Standing. Finally, she'll create a theatrical group piece centered on the themes of self-promotion, self-love and self-betrayal. This is the second grant the Foundation has made to Petrovic for the development of new work.

AMERICAN INDIAN ARTISTS, INC., New York City, acted as fiscal agent for two projects conceived by visual artist GREGORY LEE PICKARD, and titled EXPO 2000. Founded in 1987, American Indian Artists advocates, enhances and promotes the growth of emerging and established Native artists of the Americas in the visual, performing, literary and media arts through a variety of programs and services. Packards works are intended to provoke thought, invite questioning and induce contemplation. Jerome funding of $15,000 was authorized for Powwow, which involves Native American teepees floating/congregating on the waters of New York Harbor. The second, Boat Show, features three boats, filled with water and video monitors carrying the faces of children and the voices of Native American ancestors, to be exhibited in a gallery. Pickard describes himself as a conceptual artist, and a composer of ideas, using cultural imagery and iconography.

The GIVENS FOUNDATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $10,100 to support the further development of THEOLOGY: Love & Revolution by J. OTIS POWELL!. Its first form was a published prose poem, then a performance art event. With Jerome subsidy, THEOLOGY will now become an expanded text published by Spout Press and a CD recording.

WALID RAAD received support for Hostage, an experimental documentary about the Western Hostage Crisis. The crisis refers to the abduction and detention in Lebanon in the 1980's and early 1990's of western men such as Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Terry Waite and Brian Keenan by so-called Islamic Militants. This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, US, French, and British political and public life. The crisis also precipitated a number of high profile political scandal like the Iran-Contra affair in the US, and L'Affaire Gordgi in France.

POLA RAPAPORT received support for Family Secret, a nonfiction film about Rapaport's discovery in the last few months of a half-brother she never knew existed, who is now in his fifties and lives in Romania.

CRAIG RENAUD received support for This World, a feature-length documentary that tells the two-year story of an inner-city youth, from the projects of Harlem, who struggles to lift up his family from the hardships of ghetto life.

DEMPSEY RICE received a grant for Daughter of Suicide, a personal documentary about the suicide of the filmmaker's mother and the path her family has taken to heal.

JOEL SCHLEMOWITZ received support for Venus in Furs, a feature-length narrative film about the masochistic relationship between a young poet and dilettante named Severin, and Wanda, the free-spirited widow with whom he falls in love.

ANGEL VELASCO SHAW received a grant for Excuse meAre You Pilipino?, a feature-length documentary, set in New York, San Francisco and Hawaii that examines the unique ways some Filipino Americans create culture and community.

TARA SPARTZ, Minneapolis, MN, received a grant of $10,000 for I Hate Baby-sitting, a 45-minute narrative that tells the story of the big plan of two teenage girls to escape the frustrations of babysitting for one night, before beginning new lives in senior high school.

THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for ROSEANNE SPRADLIN DANCE, received a two-year grant of $15,000 in support of the development of new work. Empathy will be premiered within the next few months, accompanied by three short solos for company members. It explores themes of intimacy, gender identification and body boundaries. In 2000, Spradlin will begin work on an evening-length mixed media piece, created in collaboration with composer James Lo, entitled !Oklahoma Part Two!. Spradlin and Lo will juxtapose sections of movement and sound with images from the Oklahoma tornadoes and terrorist bombing. Finally, in the 2000-2001 season, Spradlin will create Fetish, exploring themes of chaos and control.

The MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent sponsor for ROBIN STIEHM and the Dancing People Company, received a grant of $12,000 in support of the development and production of new work in 1999. Stiehm is a well recognized dancer in the Twin Cities area, who received Jerome funding in 1994 to support an evening of her own choreography with the Dancing People Company. She has used fellowship and other grant support since then to develop her choreographic voice. Jerome funding in 1999 will support the creation of a duet for two dancers with whom shes worked since 1994. Shell also create a quartet, both described as concise pieces. Stiehm intends to push toward getting her work seen outside of the Twin Cities area in the upcoming season

The MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, submitted a proposal on behalf of choreographer ROBIN STIEHM and her DANCING PEOPLE COMPANY. Subsidy of $12,000 was authorized to support the development and presentation of new work in 2000. This was the third grant made to Stiehm's Dancing People Company. It focuses on a new evening-length work titled City, scheduled for production this coming February at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. The work is based on a section of Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities; and is about decaying infrastructure, and the decaying of society.

With the fiscal sponsorship of the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, composer ANDREW WARSHAW received funding to develop The Sparks, The Ringing: An African-American Jewish Oratorio. This evening-length music-theater piece for full choirs of African-American men and boys, and Jewish men and boys, is set in the fever-dream of an African-American musicologist who has fathered a Jewish child. The libretto ranges over 5,000 years of Jewish, African and African-American history, and explores the musicologist's visions from Pharaonic Egypt to Harlem of the early 20th Century. The work will be sung in 11 languages by choirs, nearly a dozen soloists and an instrumental ensemble. Jerome support of $8,000 was authorized to continue the development of the piece.

SASHA WATERS was awarded support for Life in These Small Hollows, a half-hour documentary about coal field residents in southern West Virginia and their efforts to save their homes from the ruinous effect of mountaintop strip mining.