Past
Grantees

JAMES SEWELL BALLET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $11,000 to support its 2004 Ballet Works program. The mission of the company is to create and perform an exceptionally diverse and appealing repertoire in an effort to broaden audience access to dance and to advance the art form. The essential element in achieving that mission is the choreography of Artistic Director James Sewell and its performances by a well-trained ensemble of dancers. The goal for the Ballet Works program is to create, acquire and develop work by emerging choreographers, who are given the support they need and access to the company in order to develop new work. One of the choreographers participating in the current season is Wynn Fricke. She developed a new work for seven dancers, titled A Water Death, last season in this program. She will receive further support to develop the work for performance by the James Sewell Ballet in the late spring of 2004. The second choreographer will be Matthew Keefe, a company member.

KIRK RAY SHANNON-BUTTS received a grant in support of blueprint, a feature-length narrative following college freshmen Ross, 17 and Malick, 19, who meet on the last day of their first year of college. Feeling liberated, Malick is set to roam off into the heat, the sun and fun of summer when he stumbles across the studious Ross, who is gearing up for a semester abroad (starting the very next morning). Before he begins his trip, Ross finds himself swept into Malicks carefree and adventurous world as they spend the day exploring New York City, each other and beyond. blueprint is a film about identity, intellect, attraction and self-discovery.

Funding was awarded to THERESE SHECHTER to support I Was a Teenage Feminist, a first-person journey into a movement that once sparked social revolution, yet now invokes indifference and disdain. In the hopes of reclaiming feminism as a tool for personal and political power, the filmmaker will explore the F-word from a variety of perspectives. The work is a one-hour digital video documentary and personal examination of one of the 20th centurys most important socio-political movements.

Taiko drummer IRIS MISAE SHIRAISHI will spend four weeks in Honolulu, Hawaii in an in-depth study of matsuri-bayashi (festival music) and specifically, the Wakayama-ryu festival music of Edo-bayashi. Shiraishi will work intensively with Taiko teacher Kenny Endo. She will also take classes offered by the Taiko Arts Center. In 2002, Endo received the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Individual Artist Award for Taiko drumming.

WILLIAM SLICHTER, Minneapolis, MN, was awarded a grant for Flourtown, an animated short that combines live action with animation, telling the story of corporate greed and the redemptive power of art. It focuses on two children of artists, who die in an accident stemming from the negligence of a group of industrialists who own a tornado factory. The story follows the lives of the artist couple as they recover from the tragedy.

NO NAME EXHIBITIONS @ THE SOAP FACTORY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $20,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota artists in the 2003 exhibition program. Half of the grant is restricted to emerging artist stipends. No Name presents four or five large-scale exhibitions and several single artist shows featuring a wide range of media each season, May through October. Its mission is to support and exhibit the work of emerging visual artists; enhance the publics understanding of and appreciation for artistic expression; and foster strength and vitality in the arts, cultural and educational communities of the Twin Cities. The large-scale and raw character of the space enables artists to express themselves in innovative ways.

SOHO REPERTORY THEATRE, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the development of new works by emerging playwrights. Incorporated in 1975, Soho Rep produces new and experimental theater productions. It sees itself as a hothouse for exuberant theatrical work and a place to nurture the exotic and extreme. Its play development activities include a staged workshop series and the Writer/Director Lab, a six-month laboratory in which playwrights are supported in creating first drafts of full-length plays. Soho Rep ordinarily produces three mainstage productions a year. Its Literary Department reads and responds to hundreds of scripts. This grant marks the third year of support that the Foundation has offered to Soho Rep.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a grant of $25,000 in support of the provision of technical assistance and services to artists. This organization helps artists and arts organizations move to new levels of career and organizational development. Its core services include individual consultations on career, organizational, and financial planning; telephone consultations on a broad array of business and professional issues; an artists loan fund; workshops on topics such as career planning, legal issues, portfolio reviews, and employment; a legal referral service, speaking engagements; and management consulting on topics such as organizational start up and development, Board meeting facilitation, strategic planning and fundraising. Many of Jerome Foundations grantees, both individual artists and arts organizations, are served by Springboard for the Arts.

JORDAN SRAMEK, an early music singer and director of The Rose Ensemble, will travel to Vancouver, British Columbia, to attend a two-week, intensive course on courtly music of the Troubadours in 14th Century France. This course is offered in conjunction with the Vancouver Early Music Festival taking place in July and August 2003. The courses musical focus will the works of Guillaume de Machaut, the great French poet/composer of the 14th Century, and his contemporaries. Sramek will improve his skills as a singer and musicologist and will seek out new repertoire for The Rose Ensemble.

LAURIE STERN & DAN LUKE, St. Paul, MN, received support for Carry it Forward, a documentary about the lives of Paul and Sheila Wellstone. It will explore the origin of Paul Wellstones politics, his controversial road to the Senate, his deep bond with his wife and co-Senator Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.

The SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer ROBIN STIEHM AND HER DANCING PEOPLE COMPANY, received $11,000 in support of the creation and development of new work. Stiehm is making a new abstract quintet set to the music of Brahms, titled Chance Makes Luck. Her second new work will be a trio for women set to the music of New York composer Annie Gosfield. Stiehm is also reworking an older piece titled In a Room, Gambling.

MARK STREET was awarded a grant for Rockaway, an experimental film about three teenage girls who stay up all night and wander city streets as a final celebration of their high school graduation. Through their conversations with denizens of the Rockaway section of Queens, New York, the viewer learns about the challenges they face as residents of a place torn between the allure of the city and the tenuous comfort of the suburbs.

Writer GWENYTH SWAIN will spend eight days in five cities in southern Indiana to conduct research and experience the areas in which her middle-grade novel in progress, Fred and Me, is based. The germ for this story came from a letter her father showed her, written by Frederick Douglass in 1888 upon the death of her great-great-grandmother, who nursed Douglass back to health after he was attacked by a proslavery mob. Swain comes from a Quaker family who lived in Pendleton, Indiana. The Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis has a particularly rich collection of original materials including several manuscript collections from families from that era.

SHASHWATI TALUKDAR was awarded a grant in support of Eunuch Alley, a Bollywood noir about journalists, gangsters, eunuchs, mothers and castration.

SARAH TEITLER received funding to support Habana (work title), a one-hour experimental video documentary about the city of Habana, Cuba. The project explores the space where art and anthropology meet. It grows out of questions concerning how to represent complex places and explore the reciprocal relationships between people and space.

The TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $14,000 to support 2003-04 programs and services for emerging Minnesota fiber artists. The mission of the Center, a coalition of the textile community in the state, is to promote excellence in fiber arts and preserve textile traditions. It represents artists working in all forms including weaving, quilting, knitting, sewing, needlework, lace making, basketry, and beading. During the 2003-04 program year, the Center will mount seven exhibitions, five of which specifically serve emerging Minnesota textile artists. Jerome funding is also directed toward high-end professional workshops that advance the skills, artistry and career development of artists. The textile shop, operating on a consignment basis, will receive increased marketing attention in the coming year. A textile dye lab offers emerging artists access to state-of-the-art dye equipment and ample work space for large-scale projects.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, New York City, received a grant of $12,000 in support of the National Theatre Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program. Theatre Communications Group strengthens, nurtures and promotes the professional not-for-profit American theatre. It offers a wide variety of programs and services, one of which is American Theatre magazine, the only national general circulation periodical reporting on the field. American Theatre offers an outlet for serious criticism as well as cultural journalism. Its published ten times per year with a readership of nearly 75,000. In 1989, with support from Jerome Foundation, Theatre Communications Group launched the National Theatre Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program, designed to help young critics from Minnesota and New York City develop careers in arts journalism. This program has enabled the magazine to greatly expand its coverage while simultaneously developing a new generation of cultural reporters and critics who have the depth of experience and breadth of perspective to stimulate critical thought and lively debate on contemporary American theatre in its historical, social and cultural contexts. Each year, critics are invited to apply for this program and are juried by a panel of experienced professionals in the field. In 2003-04, this program will support two resident critics who will receive stipends, travel and per diem support, strong editorial consultation and the opportunity to publish work in American Theatre.

JANE JEONG TRENKA, a writer and teacher will travel for four months in Korea, attending the Inje Institute for International Human Resources in the city of Kimhae, Kyungham Province, Republic of Korea. This is an intensive cultural education program for adult Korean adoptees. She will live the language and culture of Korea. As a memoirist, her main concern is trans-racial/cultural/national adoption. She is exploring in her second book in progress the themes of exile, Diaspora, language, culture, identity, family, and home.

TROIKA RANCH, Brooklyn, New York, received a grant of $8,000 in support of the creation and development of new work. Troika Ranchs Directors, choreographer Dawn Stoppiello and composer Mark Coniglio, create works that fuse dance, music and theater with digital computer technology. They use custom built sensory systems worn on the bodies of performers or placed in the stage space, which allow the performers movements and vocalizations to manipulate video, sound, light and robotic set pieces in real time. Jerome funding will support the development of Surfaces, a work based on the notion that a surface is a point of contact and conflict, whether the surface of a body, a surface that delineates space, or one that separates the public and private parts of our selves. Troika Ranch will fuse two distinct movement vocabularies for each of the dancers, depicting inner and outer selves, with a schizophrenic third vocabulary.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer URI SANDS, received a conditional grant of $8,000 in support of the development and production of a concert of new work. Sands will create work that showcases and celebrates both the diversities and similarities of dance found in the Twin Cities area. Hell incorporate ballet, jazz, contemporary and break dance in three new works. The overarching concept is dance that addresses the body, mind and spirit.