Past
Grantees

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $282,000 in support of the Composers Commissioning Program, Performance Outreach Grants and consulting services for Minnesota and New York City emerging composers. The Forum links communities with composers and performers, encouraging the making, playing and enjoyment of new music. One of the Forums goals its to provide direct support to composers and to develop markets for composers and their music. The Composers Commissioning Program competitively awards commissions to emerging composers, who take the initiative in developing their own creative vision and pursuing the creation of a new work, in partnership with performers and presenting organizations. The Performance Outreach Grants encourage multiple performances of the newly commissioned works before audiences who may be relatively unfamiliar with new music, and unaccustomed to attending performances at traditional venues. A small portion of the grant will be used to support the technical assistance and other services to composers provided by Forum staff.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the multifaceted Emerging Composers Project. The Orchestra is dedicated to the creation, performance, development, and promulgation of music by American composers. It's an incubator of ideas, research and talent; a catalyst for growth and change among orchestras; and an advocate for American composers and their music. The six ongoing programmatic components of the Emerging Composers Project are the New Music Reading Sessions and Commission Award, Emerging Composer Fellowships, Commissions, Carnegie Hall Performances, Composers Out Front Series, and the Open Review Program. New in 2003-04 are the Orchestra Underground concert and the Improvise! Festival & Conference. The Orchestra maintains an open door to any interested composer wishing to have her or his work reviewed for program opportunities. Each year, the Project has a measurable impact on 15 to 20 emerging composers, providing excellent performances, important career-building opportunities and exposure.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for WOMEN IN MOTION, received $9,000 in support of the development of the new work Bandh. Women in Motion is the performing company of choreographer Ananya Chatterjea, whose movement aesthetic is based in classical forms, updated to reflect a contemporary consciousness. Chatterjea, trained in Indian classical and folk dance traditions, became an exponent of the Odissi style of classical dance at a young age. She brought into that style elements of street and political theater. Bandh is autobiographical, based on the story of an immigrant woman who leaves a difficult marital situation, with a young child, to search for a different life and safety. On a larger scale, it is a plea that children be raised in contexts that are not embattled or ridden with violence. The piece will be choreographed through metaphors and suggestions.

The ANDERSON CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES, Red Wing, Minnesota, received a two-year commitment of $30,000 to support one-month residencies of emerging artists from Minnesota and New York City during the summers of 2003 and 2004. Resident artists work on clearly defined projects, engage in the interdisciplinary life of the Center, and make a contribution to the Red Wing community in the form of a talk, reading, class or presentation of their work. Residencies include lodging and meals at the Center as well as uninterrupted work time in a beautiful setting.

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received $18,000 for the Jerome Residency Program. Art in General provides a laboratory environment for the creation and presentation of new work, and serves as a forum for artists and audiences to explore the creative process through exhibitions, residencies, educational programs, public events and publications. The organizations submission policies and curatorial practices are designed to encourage a broad representation of emerging artists. In 1997, the Jerome Foundation provided support for a pilot program, which sponsored a two-month residency for a Minnesota artist at Art in General. The success of that pilot led to further support in subsequent years. The program is designed to enrich each artists creative process and professional development through opportunities to create new work on site and to interact with the larger New York arts community. During the residency, the artist installs a work in a 1,000 sq. ft. gallery. Visitors are encouraged to view the work-in-progress. Art in General draws upon a large network of professional contacts to make appropriate introductions, and to facilitate meetings with critics, dealers, curators and other artists. A brochure documenting the residency and including a critical essay about the work is published. The selection process is based on nominations from individuals in Minnesota and curatorial review by Art in General.

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Exhibition Program and the provision of services to artists. Art in General provides a laboratory environment for the creation and presentation of new work, and serves as a forum for artists and audiences to explore the creative process. Through exhibitions, residencies, educational programs, public events, and publications, it offers opportunities to encounter new ways of thinking about contemporary art, and to exchange ideas across cultures and artistic disciplines. Its open submission policy and curatorial practice are designed to encourage a broad representation of emerging artists. Jerome support emphasizes services to emerging artists from New York City and Minnesota.

A grant of $18,000 was made to ARTISTS SPACE, New York City, in support of the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota artists in the 2002-03 exhibition season. Artists Space supports and presents interdisciplinary work in the visual arts, including film and video, electronic media, architecture and design. Its exhibitions present new art and new artists. It also encourages experimentation, diversity and dialogue in contemporary arts practice; and fosters an appreciation for the vital and dynamic role that artists play in communities. Half of the grant commitment is restricted to artists stipends.

BANG ON A CAN, New York City, received $18,000 in support of three commissions to emerging composers within the 2003-04 People's Commissioning Fund. Bang on a Can brings innovative and adventurous music to broad and diverse audiences. Its resident ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, performs a repertoire that reflects a multiplicity of musical genres and traditions. Launched in 1997, the People's Commissioning Fund offers opportunities to composers to create music for and work with the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Jerome dollars contribute to a pooled fund, which supports new music commissions. Composers are selected for commissions in several ways including invitations, referrals, and open call review of scores. Once compositions are completed, the All-Stars rehearse the works with the composers in attendance, and then premiere the composition in an annual Commissioning Fund concert.

OLIVE BIERINGA & OTTO RAMSTAD, Minneapolis, MN, received support for Bodycartography Minnesota, a multidimensional dance video work that focuses on Minnesotas rural, urban and wilderness landscapes. They will create a series of short dance videos for outdoor projections alongside live performance events in rural and urban areas across the state.

A grant of $8,000 was awarded to the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, as fiscal agent for choreographer LAWRENCE GOLDHUBER. Goldhuber, a former member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, began presenting his own choreography in 1993. Jerome funding will support the creation of KNEED: The Life and Times of Barry Goldhubris, which continues the exploration of body image and self-acceptance in a culture that loathes fat and difference. It will be a humorous dance-theater work set in a cinematic landscape, with film projected on three sides of the performance space to create the impression that the performer is immersed in a constantly shifting environment. The intensive visual imagery will take the audience from flying through galaxies to inside the mind of the performer, using dance, song, spoken word, and elaborate giant costumes.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $17,000 to CAVE CANEM, New York City, in support of a summer retreat and poetry workshops. Cave Canem offers emerging African American poets opportunities to improve and strengthen their work and advance their careers. It seeks to deliver the very best in poetic instruction to a group of writers under-represented in professional level writing workshops. Its summer retreat is a week-long immersion in writing and critique for participants who develop their work with prominent faculty writers and teachers. Poetry workshops in New York City are structured around an organizing theme as a context for writing exercises, creation of new work and careful critique of the work generated. Cave Canems activities also include workshops in other locations, public readings, a poetry prize, publication of an anthology, and master classes.

A two-year grant of $20,000 was authorized for the H.T. DANCE COMPANY/MULBERRY STREET THEATER, New York City, in support of the dance series Ear to the Ground. This program supports emerging Asian American choreographers creating innovative works. The series is interested in artists committed to exploring their cultural ancestry through commissioned projects. Selected artists receive production assistance, commissioning fees, rehearsal space, and technical assistance.

CHERRY LANE THEATRE, New York City, received a grant of $26,000 in support of its Mentor Project, which engages emerging playwrights (fellows) in one-on-one working relationships with accomplished mentor dramatists for an entire theater season. The mentors help the fellows refine their writing skills and scripts as each moves toward the final phase of the processa three-week workshop production. The grant will support stipends to the fellows and to the mentors as well as related costs involved in developing and producing the plays.

SEOUNGHO CHO received funding for Wind Project, an experimental video that conveys the simultaneous banality and grandeur of our existence, as experiences that are exceedingly familiar are transformed into the fantastic. Time becomes distorted as water ebbs and flows in a continuum that never comes to a conclusion.

A grant of $10,000 was awarded to DANZAISA, Staten Island, New York, in support of the creation of new work by choreographer Gabri Christa. Funding will support a new piece titled Ri-Te-S of the Americas, an evening-length work inspired, in part, by a novel authored by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. Christa will also take another look at The Rite of Spring, by Stravinsky, as well as the rites of contemporary city people. Shell create new out of old, reinventing and referring to recent and distant histories, and to Western and non-Western traditions.

A grant of $8,000 was authorized for CLUBBED THUMB, New York City, in support of the production of new works by emerging playwrights during the 2003 festival of new plays, titled Homeland Insecurity. Clubbed Thumbs mission is to develop and produce new strange, funny and provocative plays by living American writers. It is particularly interested in providing opportunities for women in the theater, and to increasing and improving the quality of roles for women in dramatic literature. The Festival will present seven new plays by emerging playwrights, including one full production run, two short runs and four readings.

Storyteller and teacher JOHN COLBURN will spend eight-days at Atlantic College in Wales attending the Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival at St. Donats Art Centre. He will gain insight from the best storytellers available at this internationally recognized event on how to construct, pace, and perform an oral narrative. Colburn will also visit the nearby birthplace of Dylan Thomas, an influential literary figure for him, in Swansea.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for GRISHA COLEMAN, received $8,000 for the production of two performance-installation segments of Faster Than a Speeding Bullet. Coleman, a composer, performer, choreographer, writer, and director, is the founder and artistic coordinator of the music performance group Hot Mouth. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, developed last summer during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts, is an intermedia performance event that investigates the effects of an increasingly fast paced technological world on contemporary reality. Its envisioned as a series of modular, site-specific installations, each one referencing a natural habitat. Through conceptual dialogues with artists and scientists, Coleman is creating movement-based performance, integrated with technology and presented within these installations. She hopes to immerse audiences in an alternative reality. Technology is positioned in this project as the intermediary that joins ecology and movement and sound performance. Shes working collaboratively with an ecologist, an information architect, an electroacoustic sound designer/programmer, and a writer.

MARK CONWAY, a poet and editor from Avon, Minnesota, will travel for one month in Italy. He has published a collection of poems about his stillborn older brother, an explanation of the world to his brother who never experienced life. On this trip, he will move through Italy as if he is an observer of his brother, who is living Conway's life, as a means of trying to understand him. Conway seeks to create a gap between memory and the imagination, to create a narrative or form that tricks him into seeing his own life from another perspective. After three weeks of writing, he will connect with poet Marie Howe, former winner of the National Poetry Series and a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, and work with her on developing his manuscript.

Jerome Foundation renewed its annual membership inThe COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS, Washington, D.C., and provided a grant in general operating support. The Council is a national membership organization that serves the public good by promoting and enhancing responsibilities and effective philanthropy.