Past
Grantees

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 toward the development of new work. This multifaceted theater organization emphasizes work by women. Jerome funding will support Envision, a two-year developmental theater process commencing with a summer retreat for women theater artists to be held in June of 2000, followed by an artists' laboratory in New York City in the 2000-2001 season. It is expected that three to five projects will emanate from the retreat and the laboratory, with the final shapes determined by the core artists.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, sustains an artistic program that champions the new and untested while charting groundbreaking historical research into the work of 20th Century masters. Programs in the visual, performing and media arts support and present some of the most important artists and ideas of our time. Funding of $34,000, over two years, was authorized for the Dialogues exhibition program. The Walker invites three emerging artists from the Twin Cities and three from New York City to exhibit in pairs in three shows in Gallery 7. The artists are given commissioning fees and funds for materials, as well as transportation subsidy and per diems to visit each others studios to explore the possibility of collaborations. The shows are accompanied by full-color mini-catalogs documenting the works of the artists and including critical texts by the curator, as well as biographies and interviews. The first Dialogues exhibition covered by this grant features works by Paul Beatty and Wing Young Huie. The other pairings have yet to be determined.

CONNIE WANEK, a writer based in Duluth, received a grant to travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, for study and reflection, and to stimulate new work related to current themes in her poetry.

THE DALE WARLAND SINGERS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in continued support of the New Choral Music Program. This program draws submissions from emerging composers throughout the country, with an emphasis on those residing in Minnesota or New York City. Four finalists receive a stipend to complete a five to seven-minute work which is performed in a reading session by The Dale Warland Singers. Each year one of the four is commissioned to create a 12 to 20-minute composition which is premiered as part of the choral ensembles annual season The composers are also involved in a variety of activities designed to strengthen their work and professional development as composers.

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.

Jazz artist DONALD WASHINGTON will travel to Detroit, Michigan, to conduct a reunion of the Bird-Trane-SCO-Now! Ensemble which he founded twenty years ago. The ensemble is named for jazz greats Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Roscoe Mitchell.

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.

ANTHONY WHITE will spend three weeks in San Francisco studying shadow craft with Larry Reed, Artistic Director and Master Puppeteer of Shadowlight Productions. White will combine shadow craft with other artistic and theatrical forms to breathe new life into old stories.

Funding of $20,000 was authorized for the WOMEN'S PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, in support of developmental theater programs in the 1999-2000 season. Founded in 1978, the Women's Project & Productions nurtures women playwrights and directors, produces their plays in an environment that values their creativity, and cultivates an audience for that work now and into the future. It has presented over 100 full productions and hundreds of readings and workshops. Jerome support subsidizes the participation of emerging playwrights in several of the theater's programs including a rehearsed reading series, a works-in-progress season, a playwrights' lab and Tandem Acts.

JUAN CARLOS MARTINEZ-ZALDIVAR received support for 90 MILES, an intensely personal, short video documentary about the emotional wounds Cubans and Cuban-Americans live with everyday because of the deep divide separating the United States and Cuba.

Independent radio producer JENNY ZANNER was awarded funding for a trip to New York City and Syracuse, New York and Warren, Rhode Island to conduct interviews for an audio documentary, From Repeal to Roe v. Wade: An Oral History of Abortion Providers in New York, 1970-1973.

A commitment of $6,500 was made to the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal sponsor for 10,000 DANCES. 10,000 Dances is a professional, contemporary dance company dedicated to promoting artistic excellence by performing dance works created primarily by company choreographers. Funding was approved for Around the Block Again, a December 1998 concert season. This program concept results in fast-paced and highly diverse selections of dances, distinctively emphasizing the inclusive nature of the selection process. A variety of groups will participate including tap ensembles, Young Dance, break dance and popper groups and 10,000 Dances in choreography

The Jerome Foundation authorized support of $12,000 to 15 HEAD-A THEATRE LAB, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Funding will underwrite the development and production of an original company-created piece based on Byrons Don Juan. This is an experimental theater lab in its third season of production. There are three artistic core members who use a collaborative creative and rehearsal process to produce plays, operas and musical works distinguished by highly physical performances and unusual visual styles. The founding artistic members define their niche as presenting works marked by creative and stylized staging, accessible experimentation and the choice of scripts and musical works with epic and/or political themes. The Foundations grant recognizes the uniqueness of a creative reinterpretation of classic works.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for 3-LEGGED DOG, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the development and production of new works in the 1998-99 and the 1999-2000 seasons. 3-legged dog is a nonprofit media and theater company founded in 1993 by co-artistic directors Kevin Cunningham and Mike Taylor, and focused on the idea of versatility across disciplines. The unifying force is a shared passion for language in all of its forms. Projects include video installations, experimental theater works, multimedia theater, radio plays, films, videos, hypermedia objects and web sites. During the next two seasons, 3-legged dog will present a new Cunningham multimedia work titled Kampuchea/Loisaida, the second part of Jill Szhumachers Trilogy titled Yield Burning and Mike Taylors If I Were You, a multimedia performance work.

CEZARIJA ABARTIS, a fiction writer from St. Cloud, received funding to spend eight days in Eugene, Oregon, at the Flight of the Mind Writing Workshop. Abartis will primarily study with Ursula K. LeGuin.

A special, one time grant of $10,000 was authorized to the SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of a unique collaborative opportunity for CHRIS AIKEN, who has drawn together five expert contact improvisation choreographers and dancers. The group includes Steve Paxton, a seminal figure in dance and the creator of what is known as contact improvisation; Kirstie Simson, one of the most respected dance teachers and performers of dance improvisation in Great Britain; Ka Rustler, known in Europe for her innovative work as co-director of a center for new dance, Tanzfabrik; and Ray Chung, a performer and choreographer with whom Aiken has worked before. The drawing together of this group of exceptional artists working collaboratively with Aiken will challenge and expand his own work. From the perspective of audiences, it will be an incredible opportunity to see the best contact improvisers. A residency at Jacobs Pillow will launch the project. The artists will then travel to Minneapolis for a week of teaching and performances at the Southern Theater in October of 1998.

A grant of $15,000 was authorized for the ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER, New York City, in support of a New Choreographers Initiative. Six dancers within the company will be given the opportunity to choreograph new pieces for workshop presentation this year. Artistic Director Judith Jamison will then select one of those choreographer-dancers and commission him or her to create a new work for the Ailey season. This should be a valuable experience for those emerging choreographers who will benefit from having exceptionally skilled dancers available to them and the artistic support of Judith Jamison.

DOUG AITKEN received funding for Eraser, a process-based experimental film that follows a perfectly linear path, from North to South, for exactly six miles, exploring the effects of the Soufrieres volcano on the small Caribbean Island of Monserrat. In the process of making this journey, however, viewers will encounter a transformation that takes them from a tranquil garden island, to a landscape that reaches a point of complete abstraction, and ultimately reductive silver-gray landscape absent of any light, form or human activity-a void of absolute emptiness and neutrality.

Omonike Akinyemi - Nelly's Bodega, a 25-minute, color, 16mm drama that details the development of a friendship between Fatima, a twelve-year-old African-American girl, and Nelly, a physically abused Latina woman. It is through Fatima that Nelly realizes she must look to the literal and spiritual child within her for happiness and leave a marriage riddled with battery. When Nelly comes to this realization the entire neighborhood in which she lives begins to heal as well.

THE ALTERNATIVE MUSEUM, New York City, received a grant of $10,000 to support two group exhibitions featuring works by emerging artists in the 1998-99 program year. The Museums goals are to provide a professional showcase for artists, leadership with an artist perspective within the Museum profession, and an atmosphere in which ideas can be presented and challenged. The Museum shifted its program from issue oriented art to programs which use technology to enhance or extend aesthetic communication, often about cultural issues. Programming concentrates on media-based arts such as photography, video, computer generated works of art, interactive electronic works and electronic installation.