Past
Grantees

WYNN FRICKE, a choreographer based in Minneapolis, will spend time in Konya, Turkey, visiting museums and mosques and attending the ritual performance of the Traditional Islamic Whirling Dance (Whirling Dervishes), which was founded by 13th century mystic Muhammad Jalaluddin Rumi. Fricke is conducting research on the poetry of Rumi for an evening-length production of contemporary dance inspired by the gestures of Arabic letters. Rumi and his followers lived in Konya, where their sacred traditions continue to this day.

Filmmaker LAURENS GRANT, New York City, will spend time in Mali, West Africa, to investigate the ancient musical instruments and traditions that African vocalist Rokia Traore uses in her music compositions. Grant intends to better understand the reasons why so many young women admire Traore as a significant voice for their generation. This research will inform her one-hour documentary film, Rokia: Voice of a New Generation.

DANSPACE PROJECT, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for choreographer MIGUEL GUTIERREZ, received $9,000 in support of the development and production of Hybrid, a work for seven to nine dancers, created in collaboration between Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People. Hybrid looks at different manifestations of hybridity in the spaces of form, culture, the body and performance. This work will explore and create fluid pathways between a mix of performance forms and between people in the space, generating an exchange of energy and experience. Gutierrez continues his investigation of how to translate the experimental nature of performing into a sensory experience for the audience.

AARON DAVIS HALL, New York City, received $20,000 in support of emerging artists' commissions for the creation of new work as part of the 2006 Fund for New Work. Aaron Davis is a multidisciplinary performing arts presenter providing a variety of programs in dance, theater, music, art and film. Through the Fund for New Work, the Hall provides direct support to emerging artists. This includes commissions, subsidized rehearsal space, residencies and workshop presentations. Jerome support enables Aaron Davis to focus on emerging artists exploring new directions, providing financial support, time and space required for the development of new work. Works created through these commissions are considered for presentation in the NewFacesNewVoicesNewVision series, which includes Sunday works and the E-moves series.

HARLEM STAGE, New York City, received $20,000 in support of emerging artists' commissions in the Fund for New Work. In 2005, Aaron Davis Hall celebrated its 25th anniversary as Harlem's principal center for the performing arts, responsible for the management and programming of a three-theater complex. In 2006, it renamed itself Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Inc., and finished the restoration of the historic West 135th Street Gatehouse, a 19th Century landmark that is now a 199-seat performance hall. Through the Fund for New Work, Harlem Stage provides direct support to emerging artists, including commissions, subsidized rehearsal space, and workshop presentations. Artists are given long and short-term residencies that include support services and space. Jerome support is directed to the Fund's work with emerging artists exploring new directions.

IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $17,000 in support of a mentor program for emerging artists. This professional puppet and mask theater, founded in 1973, explores and celebrates the human experience and the wonders of the world's natural and cultural richness through performance, ceremony and teaching. It combines original designs, writing, music and movement to create puppet and mask productions, drawing from puppetry forms around the world. Three emerging artists will be selected by Artistic Director Sandy Spieler and company artists to participate in the development of the 2006 MayDay Parade and Festival. They will participate in training sessions led by Spieler, work with assigned mentors, explore their own creative ideas, work with artist and community teams, contribute design elements, lead community-building workshops and rehearse community participants.

MAERI S. HEDSTROM received a grant for a 15-minute narrative film titled Interludes, which is composed of three five-minute vignettes, thematically linked by the same actress whose appearance and character change to represent the three emotions of fear, sadness and love. The central idea of this film is to reveal how a woman's physical appearance determines the manner in which she navigates her way through the world and expresses herself to others.

The HIGHPOINT CENTER FOR PRINTMAKING, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $16,000 in support of the 2006 Emerging Printmakers' Residency Program. The Center is a professional, community-oriented nonprofit printmaking facility that offers access, education and exhibition programs. The Emerging Printmakers' Residency Program begins with an open call for applications and a competitive independent panel review. Three emerging artists receive eight months of subsidized residency time with unlimited access to facilities, equipment and materials. Artists receive the technical support of a printshop coordinator and participate in a culminating exhibition. They meet regularly as a group and receive critiques from guest artists.

Poet SEAN HILL of Bemidji, Minnesota, received funding to travel to Kenya and Tanzania to attend the Summer Literary Seminars program in Kenya and spend two additional weeks in the region. The seminar will offer him an opportunity to meet, exchange ideas with and be inspired by African writers, artists and intellectuals in Nairobi. He'll enroll in poetry workshops, attend lectures and readings, and participate in a writing retreat.

THE HMONG AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING (HAIL), Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $11,000 to support literary publication, public readings and writing workshops for emerging artists working in poetry, short fiction, novel and memoir. The mission of HAIL is to promote and preserve Hmong expressive culture. Its primary activity is publishing Paj Ntaub Voice, the premier Hmong literary arts journal in the United States, whose mission is to build a vibrant body of emerging Hmong writers and visual artists, promote their work, and celebrate and affirm their artistry to the broader public. Paj Ntaub Voice has published over 200 emerging Hmong writers and artists. The first of two issues receiving Jerome support will feature writing on the theme of spirit and the second on the theme of tales.

YUNAH HONG received a grant for Anna May Wong, a feature-length documentary about Anna May Wong's (1905-1961) struggle against racism and sexism in Hollywood in her day. A premier Chinese American film star and stage actress, Wong achieved worldwide fame in the 1920's and the 1930's. Today, her life story and career-defining struggles resonate among many young women of color who face issues of race, identity and career. This documentary will elucidate how Anna May Wong's life story is an integral part of American cultural history.

SHAUN IRONS, a multidisciplinary artist, and LAUREN PETTY, a video artist, working in Brooklyn, New York, create evocative and poetic combinations of video, film and audio as multiple-channel and single-channel works. Irons and Petty received funding to travel to Kyoto, Japan, to immerse themselves in the culture, expanding on their aesthetic range by gaining an in-depth appreciation of the intersections among ritual, ceremony, performance, meditation, nature and artistic practice.

The JAMAICA CENTER FOR ARTS & LEARNING, Jamaica, New York, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Visual Arts Program. The Jamaica Center is dedicated to supporting the creation of work by emerging and established artists, especially those who are working from cultural traditions and artistic disciplines under-represented in the larger artistic community. The Center presents four major gallery exhibitions each year, a year-long Workspace artist-in-residence program, lectures, panel discussions, career development workshops, and large-scale special exhibitions.

DIMITRI KAASAN, a writer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded funding to travel to Italy to research an autobiographical novel and short stories about the Etruscans. His novel Etruscans is based, in part, on his early life in Italy where he and his parents lived as expatriates in the 1970s. Kaasan will spend time in Impruneta, Tavarnuzze, Galuzzo, Florence, Bologna, Rome and Fiesole.

Novelist ELAINE KIM, New York City, will spend ten weeks in Kwangju, South Korea, to interview survivors and their family members about the impact of the 1980 Kwangju uprisings on their lives. Kim will absorb the sites and sounds of the birthplace of the majority of the characters in her novel Kwangju. Kim also plans to interview those who were part of the organized movement-student leaders, members of the famous taxi brigade, and some of the hundreds of ordinary people who joined in protest against the siege of a military dictator, Chun Doo Hwan. It is widely acknowledged that the movement strengthened opposition to the repressive regime in Korea and ushered in a new era of democracy.

THE KITCHEN, New York City, is an interdisciplinary arts organization that provides innovative artists working in the media, literary and performing arts with exhibition and performance opportunities to create and present new works. A Jerome grant of $15,000 was awarded to support commissions given to emerging creative artists. These new works will be presented during the 2006-07 season. They cover a broad spectrum of disciplines ranging from music, dance, theater and performance art to video, sound and mixed-media installation.

JOANNA KOHLER, a Minneapolis-based filmmaker and media activist, will travel to New Mexico to learn more about media literary models and facilitation in order to improve her community engagement with digital media and her work as a filmmaker. Kohler will participate in a workshop presented by the New Mexico Media Literacy Project.

WILLIAM KRUSE was awarded support for Big Boy, a short narrative video about sex, using the context of the coming of age talk between a father and his adolescent son. The story projects across three vignettes: First Sexual Experience, Married Sex and Sex Between Seniors. With Big Boy, the method of storytelling is as important as the message. The structure of this narrative piece addresses the new way in which audiences view content.

A grant was awarded to EMILY and SARAH KUNSTLER for Disturbing the Universe: Radical Lawyer William Kunstler, a documentary about William Kunstler's transformation from smalltime divorce lawyer to larger-than-life defender of equal rights and justice in America, as told by his daughters. In this 90-minute documentary, the co-directors will explore their father's life, from middle-class family man, to movement lawyer, to the most hated lawyer in America (New York Times), in order to understand his political development and his role in the social change movements of which he was a part.

THANHHA LAI, a poet in New York City, will travel to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to learn about changes in the lives of four ten-year old girls, now 40, whom she knew immediately after the Vietnam War ended in 1975. As a ten-year old girl in 1975, she fled Saigon with her family to Montgomery, Alabama. The travel will help Lai juxtapose her life with the girls who stayed in Vietnam and will inform her collection of prose poems.