Past
Grantees

OPERA EBONY, New York City, received a grant of $8,000 in support of a composers commission and a workshop production. Funding is dedicated toward the development and production of a new opera titled The Meetin, by composer Pamela Baskin Watson. The libretto is based on a short play about a mother and child by Langston Hughes. The music will be composed in jazz and gospel idioms, fused with a classical foundation.

A grant of $5,000 was awarded to OPERA MILLENNIUM, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the chamber opera Goddess Songs, which incorporates music and multicultural dance forms to explore the myths of seven Greek goddesses. Written by composer Marjorie Rusche, the opera is scored for womens chorus, flute, oboe, bassoon, piano and percussion. Founded in 1994 by Artistic Director Angela Malek, Opera Millennium is committed to making contemporary opera accessible to a broad audience.

Amy S. Ostergaard, Minneapolis, MN, $6,000. For the production of "White Wash", a short narrative film told through the eyes of a young African American girl who hopes to be made white by her baptism so she'll finally "fit" into her adoptive white family.

The SOUTHERN THEATER, acting as fiscal agent for a new entity, PANGEA WORLD THEATER, received a commitment of $8,000 in support of Pangeas fall production. This multidisciplinary work will be based on Persian poet Farid Uddin Attars classic work Conference of the Birds. In addition to the production of this collaboratively developed piece, Pangea will offer artists workshops and a speakers series, if funding permits. The Pangea World Theater is committed to producing international works which illuminate the universal human condition, end divisiveness and celebrate differences. It will use multi-national casts to celebrate a secular, cross-ethnic vision of tolerance and human rights.

REBECCA PETERSEN, Executive Director of A Center for the Arts in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, will visit the Flynn Theatre in Burlington, Vermont. At the Flynn, she will have an opportunity to work with a group of administrators in a performing arts organizations similar to her own. She will visit other presenters, including college and community theater groups. This journey is designed to feed her future work.

Writer ROGER PINCKNEY received subsidy to gather material for Blue Water, Green Grass, fictionalized account of an amateur smuggling ring responsible for importing Jamaican marijuana into Port Royal Sound in the 1980s. He will record interviews with former smugglers, attorneys, law officers and retired federal judge, in Columbia and South Carolina, and access court documents.

A commitment of $8,000 was made to AMY PIVAR DANCES, New York City, support of the companys 1996-97 season. The collaborative team of choreographer Amy Pivar and psychotherapist and writer Freda Rosen creates dance/theater that embodies and celebrates a powerful voice and vision for women. Funding will be directed, in part, to six short studies, each exploring the struggles of particular women who have been inspirations to Pivar in her quest for self-determination.

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, New York City, received a two-year grant of $34,000 in support of the New Theater Wing. Playwrights Horizons is a writers theater dedicated to the support and development of new American playwrights. The New Theater Wing supports work through every stage of its evolution, tailoring assistance to the needs of each individual writer. The Wing supports a reading series of 30 to 35 plays a year, a commissioning program, the African American Playwrights Unit, and a comprehensive script review process.

The POWDERHORN PARK NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION in Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $9,000 to support Crepuscule in Powderhorn Park. This neighborhood association builds connections among Powderhorn Park residents, and brings together the diverse population to improve the neighborhoods economic and cultural environment. Crepuscule is under the direction of Douglas Ewart, a composer, musician, visual artist and instrument maker. Ewart will create a suite of music and lyrics derived from community-based issues. He will teach Powderhorn Park youth how to construct wind and percussion instruments from everyday discarded items. He will develop a programmatic scheme for the performance piece and involve professional musicians as pod leaders. Each pod will be a mix of amateur musicians, students from the instrument making workshops, lay persons located in various parts of Powderhorn Park and professional musicians. The focus will be on producing sounds that coincide with or embellish the naturally occurring sounds of wind, water and trees. Crepuscule is a cultural bridge.

Writer and editor SUSAN RAFFO will undertake a combination book tour/release and study journey coinciding with the release of an anthology she has edited which examines class and queer issues (Queerly Classed, South End Press, March 1997). Raffo will be visiting individuals, activists, cultural and artistic programs and projects at the same time she is presenting book discussions and readings. She intends to examine how the release of a book can be more than the culmination of its production, achieving a point at which community building will take place.

A grant of $9,000 was authorized for RAGAMALA MUSIC AND DANCE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of its 1996-97 season, and in particular, the choreography of Ranee Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy, born and trained in India, moved to the United States in 1978. She founded Ragamala Music and Dance Theatre in 1989 in collaboration with composer/sitarist David Whetstone. Ramaswamys choreography is spawned from the Pandannallur style of Bharatanatyam, the ancient classical dance of South India. This is an extremely structured dance style, with ancient gestures, movements and stories. While retaining strong elements of the traditional style, Ramaswamy adapts the dances to new contexts and themes, adding contemporary movement to the vocabulary.

Artist NANCY RANDALL, received support to undertake a visit to Norway in order to create image about the placearchetypal and timelessand to create a new body of work. Norway offers her a place of pilgrimage.

Sculptor MIKE RATHBUN received subsidy to spend three weeks studying and utilizing wooden boat building techniques at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, Washington, in order to better understand their sculptural applications in his own work.

REPERTORIO ESPAOL, New York City, received its third grant from the Jerome Foundation in support of the program Voces Nuevas II. Repertorio Espaol, founded in 1968, averages four full productions each year of Spanish language theater. Four years ago, the company initiated a program to develop new plays that represented the many Spanish language cultures in America. Its commitment to playwrights encompasses readings, the commissioning of new plays and the production of new works in the mainstage season. There will be 13 play readings on Monday nights this fall, open to the public, free of charge. A two-year grant of $25,000 was authorized for this program of assistance to playwrights.

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM, New York City, a grantee of the Jerome Foundation since 1983, received a two-year authorization of $28,000 in general support of its developmental and presentation program for emerging composers. Roulette offers over 50 concerts each year for which it pays fees; commissions new works; provides publicity, production and recording facilities; and initiates recording and distribution programs. Each season includes a wide variety of musical styles mixing new jazz, world music, experimental rock, improvisation, multimedia and interdisciplinary work, and computer music. Young and emerging composers are prominently featured in the season.

Writer and teacher CAROLANN RUSSELL will visit Australia and New Mexico to research Aboriginal-indigenous concepts for a new book of poems, interview Native American poets, talk with musicians and editors about collaborative projects, and study a Zen meditation-writing technique. These will help her develop a multicultural aesthetic context for her work.

The DANSPACE PROJECT, New York City, received, as fiscal agent for SANDS OF TIME, $7,000 to support the development of Spiritual Survival in a War Zone during the 1996-97 performance season. Sands of Time Theatrical Dance Company was founded in 1991 by Kwame A. Ross, who fuses traditional African and African diaspora dance forms and movement concepts within the contemporary performing arts arena. The fusion illustrates parallel cultural experiences, and offers alternative solutions to societal problems.

The JAMES SEWELL BALLET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $11,000 in support of the development of two new choreographic works in the 1996-97 program, one by James Sewell and the second by an emerging New York City-based ballet choreographer. The mission of the Sewell Ballet is to create and perform an exceptionally diverse and appealing repertoire based in the ballet idiom, in an effort to broaden audience access to dance and to advance the art form itself. The Jerome Foundation had previously supported choreographers workshops at the Sewell Ballet. This new request was designed to test an alternative, but it retained the emphasis on developmental activity undertaken between the skilled dancers of the company and choreographers in residence.

Photographer PAUL SHAMBROOM will make two trips to Washington DC. to study examples of group portraiture and to meet with government officials to arrange access for his photographic series of power in the United States. This extends his earlier exploration of areas of hidden power in three series: Nuclear Weapons, Offices and Factories.

Funding for The Look of Love: A Gothic Romance, was awarded to SUZIE SILVER. The grant supports an experimental video collage of original and appropriated images and sound, exploring the expression and representation of female desire and sexual pleasure. The Look of Love will delve into the horror as well as the magnificence of intense sexual experiences. Foremost among her concerns in developing this piece is how women's sexual ecstasy is represented cinematically. The video work will take shape narratively in a conventional form, in which Silver critically examines a consciously narrative form that is often viewed as the embodiment of male desire. She will develop the visual look of the tape by layering and collaging original and appropriated footage with computer-generated special effects.