Past
Grantees

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year commitment of $38,000 in support of the Commission Project, exhibitions, residencies and artists' services. Each year, Art in General supports an average of 100 artists exhibiting in group and solo exhibitions, residencies, site-specific installations, and sound installations. Jerome dollars are directed toward the engagement of emerging artists in several programs. The newest is the Commission Project, which responds to changes in contemporary artistic practice by welcoming artists' use of nontraditional processes or unconventional art materials, work that requires extensive field research, and work that is dependent on the creation of social networks or the investigation of new technologies. The conceptual ground for the first year of the Commission Project is the premise of trade, broken down into three aspects related to artistic processes and interpretations: investment, value, and subjectivity.

BANG ON A CAN, Brooklyn, New York, received a grant of $10,000 in support of the commissioning of new work from three New York City emerging composers, through the People's Commissioning Fund, for performance by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The ensemble performs a repertoire that reflects a multiplicity of musical genres and traditions. Jerome commissions will go to Annie Gosfield, Yoav Gal, and John Hollenbeck.

SIGNE BAUMANE received support for Birth, a 10-minute animated short that addresses the universal fear of childbirth, which is a transforming experience for every birth-giving woman. This will be a traditional hand-drawn animated film on textured paper with watercolored backgrounds. The film will be a visual poem, equating fear of childbirth with the universal fear of change.

ANDREW BERENDS received a grant in support of a feature-length documentary, The Blood of My Brother: A Story of Death in Iraq, set against the violent backdrop of war and the religious texture of Shia Islam. It tells the story of a family's grief after the killing of the oldest son and breadwinner. After years of hard work, Ra'ad, an Iraqi portrait photographer, saved enough money to open his own shop. On the night of the opening, while volunteering to guard the ancient Imam Kadhim mosque in the Shia neighborhood of Kadhimiya, he was shot and killed by an American patrol. Longing for revenge, Ra'ad's brother Ibrahim dreams of joining the Shia uprising against the American occupation. But as the only male left in the family, he must take on the role of breadwinner. This is his and his family's story.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, as fiscal agent for choreographer LARRY GOLDHUBER, received $8,000 in support of a new work titled Julius Caesar Superstar. The New York Foundation for the Arts is a nonprofit arts organization that provides grants and services and offers a range of programs that support the creative evolution and development of individual artists. Choreographer Lawrence Goldhuber is making new work under the auspices of BIGMANARTS. Julius Caesar Superstar is a dance theater work focusing on ballet star Robert La Fosse as the tragic leader, surrounded by nine 300-pound men as the conservative senators who represent the bloated state, and who eventually murder him. The show will move from Roman times through the McCarthy hearings in the U.S. Senate of the 1950s, to the present, highlighting the pervasive themes of ambition, power, and betrayal still at work today.

Support was awarded to HISHAM MUHIEDDINE BIZRI for Al-Qahera (Cairo), a narrative feature that records a single day in the lives of two men in contemporary Cairo, Ahmad and Daoud. Ahmad is a Muslim poet who leaves his lodgings after a confrontation with a fellow countryman and an American smuggler of antiquities. Daoud is a middle-aged Copt (Egyptian Christian) who is forced to leave his house after he learns that his wife plans to bring a man into their bed later that day. Daoud and Ahmad wander the streets of Cairo aimlessly. They are a father and son in search of one another. The film chronicles their nightmarish journey in a city that no longer recognizes its own inhabitants. Like the Phoenician Odysseus, they undergo many trials and tribulations before they make a final decision to leave together to another country.

A grant was awarded to VIRGILIO BRAVO in support of Estilo Hip Hop, a feature-length documentary that chronicles a youth-led movement throughout Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Cuba that utilizes hip hop to respond to and organize against repressive dictatorships, racist educational systems, police brutality, and faltering economies. Through the compelling lives of four characters, the viewer learns how hip hop takes the role of an active vanguard for black and indigenous youth.

CAVE CANEM, New York City, received $15,000 in support of four New York City workshops in the 2005-06 program year. Founded in 1996, Cave Canem offers to emerging African-American poets opportunities to develop the skill and confidence needed to pursue their writing. Current programs include an annual summer workshop/retreat, regional poetry workshops, the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, readings, and publications. Two tiers of workshops open to competitively selected emerging African-American poets will be held at The Poets House and at locations in New York City boroughs other than Manhattan. Sessions will be offered twice per year and will range in length from six to ten weeks. The workshops, led by master writer/teachers, focus on the development of professional skills and practices.

H.T. CHEN DANCE COMPANY/MULBERRY STREET THEATER, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the Ear to the Ground commissioning series for emerging Asian American choreographers. The organization, founded in 1978, promotes contemporary dance and Asian American expression through artistic creation, arts education and presentation. Since 1994, the Jerome Foundation has provided support that enables the Company to commission new dance works from emerging choreographers, provide rehearsal and performance space, and produce video documentation of the works. Choreographers may apply to the program or be nominated; and their applications are reviewed by independent rotating panels. For many emerging choreographers, this series functions as a springboard for the development of and greater attention for their work.

CHERRY LANE THEATRE, New York City, received a two-year grant of $58,000 in support of the Mentor Project. The Mission of Cherry Lane Theatre is to cultivate an urban artists' colony whose established and emerging talents perpetuate a ground-breaking Off-Broadway heritage and engage audiences as partners in creating theater that illuminates contemporary issues and transforms the spirit. Jerome Foundation has supported the Mentor Project at Cherry Lane for six years. A national Nominating Committee of theater professionals recommends emerging playwrights for consideration. Three playwrights are selected to be nurtured by three recognized and experienced playwright mentors who guide the playwrights through an intensive developmental process consisting of meetings, readings, and showcase productions. The Mentor Project is a developmental journey that builds confidence, encourages distinct writing styles and perspectives, and leads to professional recognition.

THE CIVILIANS, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of new work by its core artistic group and continued development of two existing pieces, Nobody's Lunch and Gone Missing. The Civilians is an artist-run company that creates works from investigations into real life, using methods that combine documentary and artistic practices. Its shows illuminate the interplay between individual experience and the larger cultural landscape. Jerome subsidy will be directed toward the development and production of new works in the 2005-06 season. Escaping the Modern World, a project led by Jenny Schwartz and Anne Kauffman, is based on a series of interviews with individuals and communities that resist modern technology. The Evangelical Christianity Project is a collaboration between The Civilians and Z Space Studio, San Francisco, derived from an immersion residency within an evangelical Christian church community. The idea for this piece stems from the belief that the role of religious values in a democratic society is deeply unresolved and of pressing importance.

CLUBBED THUMB, New York City, received a two-year grant commitment of $20,000 in support of several programs serving emerging playwrights. Clubbed Thumb's mission is to develop and produce funny, strange, and provocative new plays by living American writers. It's committed to providing opportunities for women in the theater. Three of its ongoing programs, Summerworks, New Play Boot Camp and Productions, constitute the programming supported by Jerome Foundation. Funding assists emerging playwrights in the creation, development and production of new works. Summerworks sets the agenda for the theater's new work creation. Many of the plays initiated there go on to productions after the festival. The New Play Boot Camp is an intensive developmental workshop in which playwrights are given full access to a theater, cast and director, with culminating public readings.

A grant was awarded to MARTHA COLBURN, for Wild Eastern, part animated documentary, part essay and part dramatic film exploring the living visual mythology of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and theories that have surfaced in their wake. Divided in three main sequences with inserted interviews/dramas by contemporary artists, Wild Eastern will use a cross fertilization of the traditionally fictive medium of animation and factual material such as photographs, interviews and stock footage, to pose questions of visual authenticity. The body of the film will be filmic meditations on psychological states and actual events (for which there is no visual documentation). Wild Eastern will shine a light on different aspects of the current power struggles, while embracing art, irony and beauty as tools to explore them.

THE COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the creation and development of two works. This collaborative company of theater artists is committed to the creation of new experimental performances. The first, Letters from the Earth, originally inspired by Mark Twain's novella, which imagines a set of letters sent by the archangel Satan to his friends, the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Twain's novella is a biting satirical critique of religious dogma and human reason. The second piece, Dead End Places, will explore human ecstatic experience. The point of departure for this project begins with the work and friendship of poet-artist-visionary Brion Gysin and writer-icon William Burroughs.

The Jerome Foundation Directors approved continuing membership and general support grant to the COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS. This organization is a membership entitiy promoting responsible and effective philanthropy.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS' CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for independent playwright/director LISA D'AMOUR, received $8,000 in support of the production of This Story May Not Be True. The Center's mission is to fuel the theater by providing services that support playwrights and playwriting. Lisa D'Amour is a playwright, performer, director and teacher. She was a Jerome Fellow at The Playwrights' Center in 1997-98. She is constructing a multidisciplinary theatrical experience based upon the Stone Arch Bridge, which serviced the thriving mills on the Minneapolis riverfront and St. Anthony Falls. She's working with a team of creative collaborators and cooperating with a number of organizations in the immediate area toward the goal of 27 hours of continuous performance and installation-a large-scale visual and aural concert incorporating video, movement and music.

DANCE COUNCIL MOVEMENT THEATER, Brooklyn, New York, received $11,000 in support of the creation and development of a new evening-length work. Founded by choreographer Alyce Finwall, Dance Council Movement Theater is a company dedicated to new and original works that bring together the worlds of contemporary dance and modern dramatic expression. The new work will utilize intense physical choreography inspired from Finwall's ballet and gymnastics training, along with a dramatic sense of staging. Finwall and a company member will generate the text that creates impetus for the movement. The work will be loosely based on the Steven Berkhoff play Actor, a one-act piece that chronicles the life of a dissolute but upbeat actor as he literally walks through life on stage.

Venus de Mars received support for Take My Shoulder, an experimental documentary incorporating animation about life today as a transgendered person. de Mars, a transgendered musician, performance artist and filmmaker, sees this as an historic period in which transgendered persons are defining themselves and their rights. Take My Shoulder is a personal view of this changing tide.

OPEN CHANNELS/DIXON PLACE, New York City, received a grant of $27,000 in support of the Mondo Cane! Commissioning Program and fees to emerging artists for the presentation of works-in-progress. Dixon Place supports the creative process by producing original performance and literary works at all stages of development. An artistic laboratory with an audience, Dixon Place enables artists to make challenging and questioning work that pushes the limits of artistic expression. The Mondo Cane! commissions support experimental theater and dance artists through 1-3 months of workshop time followed by a 3-4 week run of performances. Creators are paid a commissioning fee; and Dixon Place provides a designer, director and performing fees as well as funds for production materials, rehearsal space, technical staff and marketing/publicity support.

PERFORMANCE ZONE/THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for HUMAN FUTURE DANCE CORPS, received a two-year grant of $22,000 in support of the creation and production of two evening-length works by choreographer DD Dorvillier. human future dance corps, a multidisciplinary ensemble, is dedicated to the presentation of original art in a postmodern idiom, emphasizing creative risk taking and innovation. In the new work No Change, Dorvillier will incorporate activities ranging from pedestrian marking, organizing, and measuring of the space to physically charged and articulated dances within an interactive sound installation. The two energies will build a dialog between states, from loose and ambient to sharp and expressive. Santajack will examine the inescapable destructive force at play in the construction of choreography. This cinema/dance installation will involve six dancers, a 40-minute video/film, and surround sound installation. The dance will be built collaboratively.