Past
Grantees

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for the BRIAN BROOKS MOVING COMPANY, received $8,000 in support of the creation and production of a new work, The Seven Wonders of the World, in its 2007-08 Season. This series of dances, performed by seven dancers, will be presented as one cohesive performance. With the human body and its potential at the core of his inspiration, Brooks lists his seven wonders as the Mind, the Heart, the Eye, the Hand, the Skeleton, the Muscle and the Breath. Each dance will place a seemingly small part of the body under a microscope, magnifying its function and design.

Playwright and performer SHA CAGE, Minnesota, will travel to New York City, Leeds, and London to research and develop a new one-woman show titled N.I.G.G.E.R., which examines the controversial affirmation and rejection of this word over the yearsfrom a female perspective. She will conduct interviews, view plays and performances and attend festivals and workshops. She will attend the Hip Hop Theater Festival in New York; the New Voices Conference in Leeds, England; the Decibel International Performance Theater Showcase in England; and performance events in London.

Playwright SHEILA CALLAGHAN, New York City, will travel to Berlin and Frankfurt to study the work that Berlin theaters are doing, and then build a piece collaboratively with the theater artists in German Theater Abroad. She will meet with various artistic directors and attend performances in Berlin and Frankfurt.

LAURA CARTON, New York City, will travel to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Shanghai to meet with company executives in the pornography industry to inform her work Investor Relations. This multidisciplinary visual arts-based work is an investigation into the political economy of corporate America in terms of the pornography industry. She will attend two trade fairs, one in Las Vegas and the other in Shanghai, and will meet with company executives in Los Angeles. This will inform the research and development phase of her work, and allow her to examine the possibility of collaboration.

CHAMECKILERNER, New York City, received $8,000 in support of the production of a new work, tentatively titled Exit. Founded in 1993 by Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki, this contemporary dance company creates environments that flirt with a physical and fantastic reality, sometimes seeming almost real yet slightly absurd, sometimes seeming fantastic yet disturbingly real. Exit will reflect both the challenges inherent in the field of dance and the process of aging as creators, serving as an allusion to the artist's capacity for navigating the unknown.

DANZAISA, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of a new work.The organization operates under the direction of choreographer Gabri Christa. It received support for the development and production of Memoria, to be produced in early 2008. Memoria is a multimedia performance project, inspired by the work of the writer Hanif Kureishi. Christa's themes are lost dreams, the isolation of living and probably dying in a country or a place where one wasn't born, the distance from relatives and family and the creation of a new community that becomes a family. With Memoria, Christa will continue to address the immigrant experience, an ongoing theme for her.

THE CIVILIANS, New York City, received $11,000 in support of the development and production of new work during the 2007-08 Season. The Civilians is an artist-run company that works to strengthen the connections between theater and contemporary society. It creates original projects from investigations into real life. Using methods that combine documentary and artistic practices, the process encourages a deep, inquisitive engagement between the artists and their subject matter. In the current season, The Civilians will produce Paris Commune, an original play by Steven Cossen and Michael Friedman with music adapted from period songs by various French songwriters. Paris Commune revisits the radical cabaret of 19th century Paris to tell the story of a popular uprising of working-class Parisians in 1871. A second new work, This Beautiful City, is a play with music, created from interviews, which explores evangelical Christianity in its unofficial U.S. capital: Colorado Springs, Colorado. This Beautiful City will premiere in 2008.

CLUBBED THUMB, New York City, received $15,000 in support of Summerworks, productions of new plays and Boot Camp. Clubbed Thumb commissions, develops and produces strange, funny and provocative new plays by emerging writers. Its 11 seasons have illuminated over 100 plays and 60 productions. The New Play Boot Camp provides intensive development workshops to three playwrights each year, culminating in public readings. The development of the script is prioritized over production. The 2007 Summerworks series will feature three productions of new works.

COFFEE HOUSE PRESS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $32,500 in support of the publication of books by emerging writers. Coffee House Press is a literary publisher noted for consistently high editorial standards, a sense of discovery and a commitment to celebrating diverse writers. It reviews solicited and unsolicited manuscripts to identify new and emerging voices. Jerome Foundation support is directed toward six books by emerging authors, the majority of whom are based in Minnesota and New York City. The books include works in fiction, memoir and poetry.

Composer SIDIKI CONDE, New York City, will travel to Salvadore, Brazil, to explore the African influences on Afro-Brazilian Candomble ritual music. He will collaborate with Tigana, a drummer and scholar of African traditions, and visual artist Rodrigo Bueno.

Playwright JORGE IGNACIO CORTIAS, New York City, will travel to Caracas, Venezuela, to conduct interviews, attend plays and collaborate closely with theater artists to understand better how theater functions in a changing society. The ultimate goal is the creation of a new play on the issues raised by Venezuela's socialist experiment. He will meet with Artistic Directors of Venezuela's National Theater and Gimnasio de Actores and observe their work.

The Council on Foundations received $10,170 in general support of its program and as the Jerome Foundations membership commitment. The COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS, Washington, D.C., provides substantial services to their members and to the general public. It promote responsible and effective philanthropy.

OPEN CHANNELS/DIXON PLACE, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for D UNDERBELLY, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of two new works. Dixon Place provides space and services for performing and literary artists to develop new work for engaged audiences. D UNDERBELLY is a network of independent artists of color invested in interdisciplinary experimentation through the creation of new work and communal exchange. With Jerome Foundation support, choreographer Baraka de Soleil will create and produce two new works. The first is the kinesthetically driven EGRESS, abstracted from Sartre's play No Exit and an earlier work by de Soleil. It explores the subconscious of contemporary culture and relationships, refracting an expansive notion of blackness. The second work, Childr'n of O, examines the voice and image of an iconic Black woman figure. It is envisioned as a project for seven characters, unfolding through a web of poetic text, deconstructed television and Internet cultural symbolism, gestural language and multimedia projections.

A grant was awarded to JUAN ANTONIO DEL ROSARIO for The System, a feature-length narrative film whose premise is based on the simple metaphor that the human body is the ultimate bureaucracy. In this film, the human body, and all its operations, is a typical modern city with a typical economic model. In this city, the Brain is a highly sophisticated corporation, charged with collecting and using data to administer virtually every operation that takes place in the system. On the other side of town, the Heart is a vast industrial complex whose sole mission is to produce and deliver oxygen to every cell/person in the System. This film explores what happens when an organism turns on itself. How does the Brain deal with self-destructive behavior? How does the tired Heart send signals indicating that it may be reaching its breaking point? The System is an allegorical story that projects the micro into the macro. Politics, social systems, cities, climate and the best and worst of human nature collide as a single organism confronts its mortality, and looks for a reason to continue existing.

Photographer LOURDES DELGADO, New York City, will travel to Rochester and Dundee, New York, to learn a 19th century photographic process from John Coffer in Dundee, and to research the 19th century photography collection at the Eastman House Museum in Rochester. She will learn how to make ambrotypes, ferrotypes, glass plate negatives and albumen photographic prints from Coffer. This will help her take a step forward in her own work in the wet plate medium. At Eastman in Rochester, she will study a collection of 19th century wet plate photographs of the American West and Civil War.

MITCH DEOUDES was awarded support for The Death of Doctor Island, an experimental 35mm narrative that tells the story of a mentally ill boy trapped on what appears to be a deserted island, told as a cycle of seven installments. According to Deoudes, the film is an experiment in immersion and persistence in cinema, which touches on themes of morality, socialization, and sacrifice.

Composer AMIR ELSAFFAR, New York City, will travel to Baku, Azerbaijan, to study the Mugam repertoire, the classical music of Azerbaijan, and to learn the ways in which Mugam melodies and structures have been used in the creation of new works, particularly in the jazz idiom. Mugam is the Azeri manifestation of a larger musical phenomenon known as Maqam. ElSaffar will study vocal techniques with two experts and explore approaches to applying Maqam techniques to jazz through study with noted Jazz musicians.

ETHEL'S FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, received $12,000 in support of commissions for emerging composers, instrument construction, and rehearsal of the new works.. The ensemble explores new possibilities in string quartet performance, forging a repertoire unencumbered by convention, genre or style. Its performance schedule and regular touring ensure plentiful opportunities for presentation of new works. Jerome funding will support commissions to three emerging composers, one of whom will be creating four bowed instruments for the members of Ethel to use in performance. Ethel musicians will work with composers during rehearsal to provide feedback in the development of the works. When selecting composers to commission, Ethel examines each composer's body of work and its relevance to Ethel's performance aesthetic, the degree of artistic innovation, and how the work may diversify Ethel's repertoire.

ETHOS PERCUSSION GROUP, New York City, received $22,500 in support of the Emerging Composers Commissioning Fund. Since 1989, Ethos Percussion Group has presented percussion music utilizing an ensemble of accomplished classical and world music artists, each with a distinctive background and musical perspective. Its programming integrates global instruments and playing styles into the conventions of Western chamber music to create visually and aurally compelling experiences. To date, support from Jerome Foundation has underwritten 23 commissions of new music for the ensemble. Continued support will allow Ethos to commission new works for percussion quartet from three emerging composers and to present those works in public performances in 2008 and 2009. The objectives of the Fund are to serve emerging composers by subsidizing the creation of new work and to develop creative partnerships from a wide range of genres in order to expand the literature for percussion and the audience for contemporary concert music.

FilmNorth (formerly Independent Filmmaker Project Minnesota), St. Paul, Minnesota, received $20,000 in support of programming and services for film and video artists and photographers. IFP Minnesota is a center for media arts, whose mission is to support and promote the work of artists who create screenplays, film, video and photography. Its goal is to cultivate a healthy and viable community for these artists. Jerome Foundation subsidy will assist with classes and seminars for independent media artists, low cost access to equipment, technical assistance, mentoring and other forms of assistance to emerging artists.