Past
Grantees

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for African-American independent performance artist AUNDARAY GUESS, received $8,000 for the development and production of NAKED. This work started as a linear play about troubling aspects of his life. Through participation in the Exchanges Mentoring Program at Intermedia Arts, the work was transformed. It became an edgy and challenging performance piece, which Guess intends to expand and revise with new scenes addressing important issues such as black/white gay male relationships, homophobia in the black community, the threat of homosexuality to the black family and the schism between black and white gay men.

Support was awarded to W. DAVID HANCOCK, a playwright from St. Peter, Minnesota, to spend six weeks in Argentina where he will conduct research for a new play titled Immaterial Depositions, a work about the systematic erasure of groups of people by a repressive government.

JENNIFER HARDACKER received funding for an experimental video, The Places We Call Familiar, that focuses on the relationship of memory to the places in which they occurred and the importance places have in our feeling of personal history and belonging.

AARON DAVIS HALL, one of Harlems principal centers for the performing arts, is celebrating its 20th anniversary season this year. Jerome funding of $20,000 is directed toward the Fund for New Work, now in its fifth year. The Fund provides space and commissioning monies to creative artists in the form of upfront financing for the development of new works. These works tend to be produced by the Hall in a series titled NewFacesNewVoicesNewVisions. Monies are used for a variety of purposes, including paying performers for rehearsal, renting rehearsal space, mounting workshop productions and commissioning creative collaborators during the conceptual phase. The Fund provides major support for one to three works of emerging artists each season and smaller grants for up to eight artists, some of those for workshop development. Jerome funding supports cash awards/commissions to emerging creative artists.

HARVESTWORKS, New York City, received a two-year grant of $37,000 in support of the Artist-In-Residence Program. The mission of Harvestworks is to support sound and media artists by providing services to artists who use sound and computer technology as creative media. Services include production assistance, education courses, information programs, financial aid and the presentation and distribution of completed works. The Artist-In-Residence Program offers inexpensive or free access to high level computer equipment in state of the art studio facilities. It serves between 9 and 15 artists annually, each of whom is given up to 60 hours in the facility, including studio time and engineers' fees. The Residency Program serves composers, installation artists, film and video artists and digital artists.

HERE, New York City, is a multi-arts center with three performance spaces, a gallery and a caf. Jerome Foundation funding of $20,000 was authorized for the development of Dead Tech, a new dance theater work inspired by Ibsens 1892 play The Master Builder and theoretical texts including Dead Tech: A Guide to the Archaeology of Tomorrow and Pornography in the Urban World. Dead Tech represents an important turning point in the long-established collaboration between writer/director Kristen Marting and composer Matthew Pierce. The team will create a hybrid theatrical form comprised of Martings dance-theater gestural vocabulary and Pierces classical-based populist sensibility. The work will examine how architecture and technology reflect and define reality.

The MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for choreographers KRISTIN VAN LOON and ARWEN WILDER and their company HIJACK, received $10,396 to develop and produce new work. Hijack is the nine-year choreographic collaboration of Van Loon and Wilder, who create active roles for dancers and audiences with equal emphasis on process and product. Using Mark Tansey's Four Forbidden Senses as image inspiration, the two will create a new duet set in post-contact improvisation. They will also use Jerome funds to create The Chorus, a work for six dancers, informed by movie musicals with big dance numbers, and the choreography of team sports, lunch hour skyway traffic and marathons.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, a public foundation established by the New York Council on the Arts in 1971, works with the arts community throughout the state to develop and facilitate programs in all disciplines. It acted as fiscal agent for Artistic Director John Jahnkes THE HOTEL SAVANT, which explores the abject conditions of history and fantasy, as well as its more ridiculous aspects, often basing original presentations upon factual artists, entertainers and criminals of another time. Jerome Foundation made a grant of $12,000 to support The Spirit Mercurius, a six-person theater piece with music, dance and video. The play revolves around twin sisters, abandoned by their parents on a nonspecific island, who, through one sisters act of divination, conjure a spirit (the hermaphroditic Mercurius of alchemical legend) to fulfill their fantasies of revenge upon a negligent family.

Freelance photographer WING YOUNG HUIE received a grant to spend up to six months traveling in the United States, to see and photograph America. This is a road trip that will involve making photographs and recording interviews, and approaching the United States as one big neighborhood.

pARTs PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for photographer WING YOUNG HUIE, received $15,000 for The Lake Street Project. The mission of pARTs is to engage, build and nurture an informed community for fine art photography and creative imaging through exhibitions, dialogues, publications and outreach. Wing Young Huie's Lake Street Project is a six mile public art exhibition of 400 photographs, displayed from the Mississippi River to Lake Calhoun in the summer and fall of 2000. Photographs and accompanying text will be shown in store windows, and on bus stops, sides of buses, sides of buildings and billboards. Huie has been photographing and tape recording the residents of the Lake Street Area of Minneapolis since 1996. The 12 urban neighborhoods connected by the street are an incredible array of co-existing socio-economic, ethnic and cultural realities. A web site, a map of photographic locations, comment books and a public auction will increase the impact of the Project.

UNIQUE PROJECTS, New York City, is managed by Pentacle/Danceworks. It served as fiscal agent for IRÉNE HULTMAN DANCE, which applied to the Jerome Foundation for support of its 2001 New York season. A grant of $8,000 was authorized for what Hultman calls the All-star event, featuring six dancers from the ballet and the modern worlds, all performing artists of considerable renown. Hultman envisions choreographing in a more abstract dance mode, working closely with the performers to elicit individual traits and talents, while exploring working dynamics and weaving a cohesive product.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, also served as fiscal agent for DANCE KUMIKOKIMOTO, founded in 1986 by choreographer Koosil-ja Hwang with composer Yuval Gabay. Hwangs work embodies a relentlessly driving, creative energy. She layers visual movement and vocal elements in swirling patterns that may at first seem impenetrable, yet convey a deep and lasting imagery. Her choreography combines elements of live music, composed partly by herself, song, film, video and dance, all creating social sculptures. She develops dramatic character from the inside by investigating her own mythology and history. Funding of $10,000 was authorized for the development of a multimedia piece titled The Argus, featuring choreography and music by Hwang in collaboration with Japanese composer Yoshide Otomo, and video by Caspar Stracke.

ILLUSION THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $50,000 toward the Fresh Ink series, the Artistic Associates program and developmental services for emerging playwrights. Illusion's mission is to create theater that illuminates the human condition by addressing the illusions, myths and realities of our times; and to use the power of theater as a catalyst for personal and social change. Fresh Ink is a series of three to six new works produced annually, many of which are the creations of emerging playwrights, choreographers, composers and performance artists. Fresh Ink is a means to develop new works in front of audiences without exposing those pieces to the pressures of the mainstage spotlight before they are ready. It focuses on works-in-progress, chamber pieces and works that take artists in new directions. The Artistic Associates program brings fresh opinions and expertise to Illusion. Current Artistic Associates are Kim Hines, Kent Stephens, Peter Rothstein and Beth Gilleland. Jerome funding will also be used for readings and developmental work on scripts by emerging playwrights.

Lao choreographer and dancer LADDAVANH CHANTHRAPHONE was awarded a grant to travel for six weeks in Thailand, where she will study the most popular form of Lao/Thai dance. Khon is a dance drama performed while wearing brilliantly crafted masks that has disappeared from Laos. Chanthraphone and her family fled Laos at the height of the Communist invasion, and as a child, she spent several years living in a refugee camp in Thailand.

INTAR, New York City, received $15,000 toward the 2000 NewWorks Lab. INTAR's mission is to identify, develop and present the work of Hispanic American theater artists and to introduce outstanding new works to American audiences. The NewWorks Lab is part of the theater's developmental activities, dedicated to the support of writers, directors, actors and other artists from the Latino/a theater community. The focus of the Lab is on creation rather than production. Playwrights are encouraged to experiment with new forms. Workshop presentations of four Lab works are held each season. Jerome funding was authorized for the participation of emerging artists in the NewWorks Lab.

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota is a multidisciplinary arts center dedicated to building community through creative self-expression. Artistic works are presented in thematic series, institutional partnerships, juried exhibitions and open entry formats. The organization runs a substantive artist services program that nurtures individual artists. The Jerome Performance Art Commissioning Program is a production and technical assistance initiative aimed at emerging performance artists who deserve and need opportunities to advance their skills. The program is designed to provide individualized assistance to three artists each year. There is an open call and nomination process, which yields proposals reviewed by an independent selection committee. A two-year grant of $70,000 was authorized to support the Performance Art Commissioning Program in 2000 and 2001.

INTERMEDIA ARTS MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $101,000 to support Art in Space and artists services. Intermedia believes in the power of art to transform lives, communities, values, institutions and society. It is fully committed to supporting artists visions and the creative process. In 1986, Intermedia created an exhibition program that provides commissions to emerging artists who have not had major opportunities to create and display installation works. Projects may incorporate any form of media. Services and adjunct programming support the artists selected for commissions. Intermedia then mounts an exhibition of their work, produces a small catalog and brings in a visiting artist/critic for a public presentation and individual consultations with Art in Space artists. Due to the experimental and multidisciplinary nature of much of its work, Intermedia serves a large number of emerging artists. Resource referral and specialized workshop training provide information and basic tools to artists. It is for these ongoing activities that a small portion of the Jerome Foundations grant was dedicated.

WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, a conductor, received a grant to spend two weeks in Boston, Massachusetts attending Joseph Giffords Conducting Workshop. Intriligator will also attend the American Symphony Orchestra Leagues National Conference to enhance his abilities as a conductor and to further his career.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $15,000 to the JAMAICA CENTER FOR ARTS AND LEARNING, Jamaica, New York, in support of the participation of emerging artists in its Visual Arts Program. The Center makes the arts accessible to its community and supports the creation of new works by emerging and established artists, especially those who are working from cultural traditions and artistic disciplines under-represented in the larger artistic community. From a residency program for local artists, to workshops, funding seminars and teaching opportunities, the Center provides not only a venue for cutting-edge art but also the resources necessary to help artists nurture their talents and promote their work.

VOLCANO LOVE, New York City, was founded in 1994 by choreographer Sarah East Johnson to develop and perform artistic works that combine dance, theater and circus. The company is a troupe of strong women performing physical feats of power, strength, stamina and daring. The movement vocabulary encompasses dance, wrestling, circus acrobatics, aerials, contact improvisation and more. A two-year grant of $24,000 was approved in support of the development and production of new dance works. One of those is Timberline, choreographed for seven dancers, and inspired by the harsh conditions of high altitude terrain.