Past
Grantees

Rosemary Williams, Minnesota, received $13,000 to support MXC: The Invention of Tomorrow, a 10-episode web series that will tell a narrative story based on the failed 1970s utopian project, Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). This fictional narrative series imagines that the utopian city was built.

Sen-I Yu, New York City, received $5,000 to travel to Taipei, Taiwan to conduct research and gather visual references for a new narrative feature project My Beauty Queen Mom, a comedy-drama that explores mental health issues, family relationships, and the beauty pageant culture in Taiwan.

Zenon Dance Company and School received $56,000 ($28,000 per year for two years) to support the commissioning and performance of new dance works by six emerging choreographers from Minnesota and/or New York.

Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), Brooklyn, New York, as fiscal sponsor for 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of a new work, The Fever. BAX provides a nurturing and year-round performance, rehearsal, and educational venue that encourages artistic risk-taking and stimulates dialogue among diverse constituencies. Formed in 2009, 600 HIGHWAYMEN operates under the direction of Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone. They create expansive performances that illuminate the inherent poignancy and theatricality of people together. The Fever, scheduled to premiere in January 2016, sets up communities that meet as strangers, and grow into and out of each other as the work unfolds. The work is about how an audience and performers come together and fall apart, and how meaning is defined in relation to each of these groups. The piece will be built with three multi-generational performing teams.

luciana achugar, (achugar, inc.), Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of the production of a new dance piece, An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love, and the development of a new untitled work. An Epilogue for OTRO TEATRO: True Love is a deepening of achugar’s investigation of the possibility for another kind of theater, a theater that gives voice to our bodies’ arcane spirit, instinct, and desire. The environment for this piece will take place in a theater in ruins, as if there has been a war or some kind of disaster. The performance is a means to metaphorically re-build the theater and community. In addition to the premiere of An Epilogue, achugar is developing a new work to be performed in public, non-theatrical spaces. The mission of luciana achugar is to create a visceral understanding of dance in which experience, connection, and compassion are given value as true sources of meaning.

ALAJE, SEKOU, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria, to research the birth place of the Yoruba goddess of fresh water, Osun, and continue research on drum rhythms, song, call and response chants, horns, and strings and other African Diaspora musical forms. Alaje is working on a series of compositions called Sweet Waters and has been conducting interviews and conversations with various African musicians and cultural leaders throughout the Southern United States and Cuba. This trip will provide Alaje the opportunity to study and hear direct stories from the people of Osogbo, which will all be incorporated into this project. 

CECILIA ALDORONDO received support for Memories of a Penitent Heart, a feature-length (80-minute) documentary in which Aldarondo cracks open a Pandora’s box of unresolved family drama surrounding the death of her uncle Miguel, who died 25 years earlier from AIDS.  Like any good detective story, Memories of a Penitent Heart began with two things: a mystery and a clue. The mystery was Miguel’s death; the clue was a shoebox of 8mm home movies decaying in Aldorondo's mother’s garage. Although these home movies documented cheery moments like birthdays and vacations, they also prompted Aldorondo’s investigation into a darker period in her family’s history: Miguel’s deathbed conflict with his mother, and what had become of Robert, the lover Miguel left behind. This compelling film examines those issues and more.

BRIAN ALFRED received support for Chromacity, a 6-minute experimental animation exploring color in the landscape.  Through recent reading and studying of color, Alfred became interested in the idea of creating an animation that explores an experimental use of color within our environment. In using photographic images that he has been taking during recent trips to Japan and along the East Coast of the U.S. as a starting point, he strives to create an animation that explores the way we experience color in the places we are surrounded by. In his animations, he creates digital drawings (usually from his own photographs) which he then puts into motion. He thinks of the animations as moving paintings. They sometimes have a loose narrative, but usually are just scenes of our environment. In making this film he will also collaborate with musicians to create experimental soundtracks to accompany the moving images he creates.

NORTHERN LIGHTS.MN, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $16,000 in support of the development and production of Census. The mission of Northern Lights.MN is to support emerging and established artists in the creation and presentation of art in the public sphere, focusing on innovative uses of technology, old and new, to imagine new interactions between audience, artwork and place; explore expanded possibilities for civic engagement; and encourage pluralistic community. Aniccha Arts (2004-present) is an experimental arts group that creates immersive performance environments using an interdisciplinary voice primarily made of dance and electronic media. This company of designers and dance collaborators construct worlds that question individual agency inside the systems in which we live.

NICOLE ANTEBI received support for Fred’s Rainbow Bar and Other Stages on the International Border (working title). The topographical film essay uses a variety of animation styles along with live action and archival imagery to interrogate histories, memories, and imaginings of the border landscapes of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, MX, the region where Antebi grew up. The film is mostly set in the early 90’s or the era before NAFTA and before the erection of the Border Security Fence with flashbacks to the Battle of Juárez and flashes forwards to contemporary events, like the razing of the ASARCO smelter. The International Border (or the river with two names) remains the mainframe through which events unfold as we observe teens navigate these disparate landscapes.

ARANGO, MAURICIO, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Bogotá, Santa Marta, and Medellín, Colombia, to conduct research related to the political violence that has gripped the country, meeting with governmental and non-governmental organizations and individuals involved in the coverage and analysis of decades of violence. The tumultuous social history of Colombia, Arango’s home country, has led him to consider how deeply traumatic events permeate the conditions of everyday life. The trip will offer him the time to gather experiences, thoughts, and ideas that will influence and shape future artwork.

ARMENTO, KEVIN / BRADLEY, JAKI, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to New Orleans and Jackson, Louisiana, to further their investigative research into the myths and realities of Buddy Bolden, the New Orleans trumpeter credited with inventing jazz, and to meet with those playing in his wake today. Research resulting from this trip will inform the development of Armento and Bradley’s new theatrical production, Playing Hot, an immersive musical about the birth of jazz and the tragic life of one of its earliest stars.

ARTLEY, SCOTT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Links Hall in Chicago, Illinois, and Dixon Place in New York, New York to investigate the role of the artistic director in contemporary community-driven performing arts organizations by visiting two organizations outside of Minnesota that have clear alignment with Artley's work as the lead artistic leadership of Patrick’s Cabaret. As an emerging creative leader, Artley wants to investigate and experience how other peer organizations, and their creative leadership, are evolving to meet the needs of contemporary artists.

NOBUYUKI ASAI received support for a feature-length (90-minute) experimental film, Diary of Rooftop Water Towers. This film will be a harmonic cinepoem depicting the changing phases of New York water towers as they evolve through the seasons from the cradle to the grave, and their mutability as compared to that of daily human lives. Using 35mm black and white film stock, Asai filmed approximately 150 static shots of rooftop water towers. Each shot will be separated by a brief interval of black leader, which will invoke the perception of the entire film seeming like a Japanese "Haiku","Noh" or "Zen" rather than a city symphony. New York City has considerable diversity through its multitude of races, languages, classes and religions. Many stories occur amidst this vast range of people every day. On the rooftops, however, their emotional voices are not heard. Instead, ambient sound, distant noises from the subway, traffic and construction projects, airplanes, birds, wind, rain and thunder are heard. The sounds heard by water towers closely resemble the daily situations of human lives and make them a uniqely ethereal metaphor for human tranquility.

ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS' WORKSHOP, New York City, received a grant of $24,000 in support of the Margins Fellowship, an annual program designed to nurture emerging Asian American writers working in the genres of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans. Through its writer fellowships, online magazines and live events, Asian American Writers’ Workshop seeks to strengthen the Asian American intellectual culture of the future through its curatorial platform, which includes its New York events series and its online editorial initiatives.

BAAD!/The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Bronx, New York, received $10,750 in support of Open Call, a mentorship program for emerging Latino and/or Bronx-based dance artists to create new performance works. BAAD! creates, produces, presents, and supports the development of contemporary dance and all creative disciplines with a focus on women, People of Color, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, and Queer communities. It produces four annual festivals, serves as a home for the seasons of affiliated dance companies, publishes a dance magazine, and supports an artist in residence program. In partnership with Pepatián, a South Bronx-based organization dedicated to creating, producing, and supporting contemporary multidisciplinary art by Latino and Bronx-based artists, BAAD! created Open Call. Artists will receive stipends, rehearsal space, mentoring, works in progress showings, technical support, documentation, and a presentation.

BEEBE, AARON, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Kolkata, India, to examine the history and contemporary labor practices of jute production in preparation for an installation work to be created in collaboration with an Indian documentary filmmaker, Nishtha Jain. Beebe will visit 19th century jute mills and the Indian Museum, which champions the early industrial arts of the same era. The research into contemporary labor practices and popular depictions of the jute industry will inform a new collaborative project that explores the relationships between the early history and pre-history of film and India’s global industrial power during British Colonial rule.

OPEN EYE FIGURE THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $12,000 as fiscal sponsor for the development and production of If My Feet Have Lost the Ground by TORRY BEND, a puppet artist, theatrical designer, and assistant professor in the Department of Theater Arts & Dance at the University of Minnesota. If My Feet Have Lost the Ground is a multidisciplinary performance work about a woman who finds a beating heart in an airplane seat pocket. It is a tale of unlikely love, impossible searches, and fateful self-discovery that takes place in a magical world created through video and puppetry. The mission of Open Eye Figure Theatre is to create original figure theatre, animating the inanimate on an intimate scale; train the next generation of figure theatre artists; and advance adventurous, artist-driven programming in the Open Eye theatre space.

BENTLEY, DAWN, Roseville, Minnesota, will travel to Auckland, New Zealand, to attend the Second International Award for Public Art Exhibition and Conference at the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries to view the work of her peers and engage in a cross-cultural learning opportunity with leading artists, sociologists, urban planners, and scientists during the conference. As the Executive Director of the Art Shanty Projects, Bentley will investigate the ways public art and creative place-making practices contribute to the social and environmental development of cities.

BERGMARK, KRISSY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Mumbai, India. Bergmark plans to study Hindustani tabla drumming with world-renowned master Pandit Yogesh Samsi. This study opportunity will inform new compositions for her percussion quartet, Matra.