Past
Grantees

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $10,460 to the New York City-based EXPERIMENTAL INTERMEDIA FOUNDATION, which acted as fiscal agent for composer and performer MICHELLE KINNEY and the ensemble Mississippi Peace. Funds will be used to commission new works from composers and to record concert works with the aim of producing a CD of works by the lead composer Michelle Kinney.

DARESHA KYI received support for Loosen Knot, Release Me, a one-hour experimental docudrama that will explore how and why many beautiful, talented and intelligent women fall into and pull themselves out of abusive relationships. Using her personal story as the heart of the film, Kyi will create a rich, multilayered tapestry of sound and imagery dealing with the issues involved in domestic violence from personal as well as social, political, spiritual and psychological perspectives. Loosen Knot, Release Me will include elements of poetry and dance. Kyi will collaborate with a choreographer and composer to create musical and visual interpretations of the emotional landscapes the women and she explore.

Subsidy was awarded to choreographer DONALD LACOURSE to attend a folklore festival in Rzeszow, Poland, and an intensive week-long dance workshop in Benesov, in the Czech Republic. He will increase his knowledge of the dances and folklore of these countries and regions. This investigation is being undertaken to create a week-long residency program and develop choreography for the Ethnic Dance Theatre

Musician LEO LARA will spend an extended period in Ecuador and Bolivia to expand his knowledge of the musical and cultural heritage of communities of African origin in those two countries, and to renew his own cultural roots. Hes especially interested in learning how to play the traditional instruments of the Chota Valley, with a secondary area of interest in music and dance in the northwest corner of Ecuador, the Province of Esmeraldas.

Poet, author, lecturer and actor THOMAS FRANCIS LABLANC will travel to research and visualize a novel, Quiet Turtle, and an accompanying stage production, Leading Eagle, both based on 125 years of Dakota experience. The story begins in Minnesota and moves to the Black Hills, down to the Grand Canyon, up to the Rocky Mountains and into Canada. To move forward with the writing project, LaBlanc will retrace the journeys of his ancestors.

Michele Lepsche, St. Paul, MN, $6,500. For the production of "Ink Blot", a feature length film in the genre of film noir in which the genders of the archetypal characters have been reversed to a female detective, a female criminal and a male femme-fatale.

Funding was awarded to LANA LIN to produce a 45-minute, 16mm experimental film, Almost the Cocktail Hour, interpreting the life of Jane Bowles, writer, eccentric and wife of writer/composer Paul Bowles. The film will examine the perpetual conflicts that characterized Bowles' life: her contagious sense of humor and consuming despair, her lesbian loves and heterosexual marriage, and her sense of isolation matched equally by a need to affect the outside world. Lin's goal is to make visible the crisis of conflict that paralyzes the individual who struggles with basic affirmation of her own experience. Almost the Cocktail Hour will cross genres, moving from tragedy to comedy, mixing documentary, narrative and non-narrative modes. Bowles' struggles can be read as a metaphor for the filmmaking process-a struggle to communicate a personal vision to the outside world through intricate decision-making.

Actor and writer SOPHRONIA LIU will visit Hong Kong and Washington D.C. She will receive advanced training in Tai Chi and in Asian theater movement and/or voice, as well as collect materials for future performance and writing projects. During a one-month trip to Washington DC, she will attend the Adult Improvisational Theater Workshops conducted by the Living Stage Theater Company.

The Loft, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $30,000 in support of the 1996-97 Mentor Series. Established in 1974 by writers for writers, The Loft has offered the Mentor Series since 1980. It provides an environment in which emerging Minnesota writers may work in small group settings with nationally recognized authors. It serves both poets and fiction writers.

Mabou Mines, New York City, received support of $15,000 for the 1996 Suite program. Mabou Mines has always practiced the philosophy that if young artists are to make it through the early stages, maintain their uniqueness and not become mere imitators, they require the support of more established fellow artists. Suite is a resident artists program which emphasizes development and experimentation. Emerging artists work with Mabou Mines company members to develop new projects.

Singer and guitarist KATE MACKENZIE will participate in the Swanoa Folk Arts Workshops in Asheville, North Carolina. This guitar workshop will provide her with an opportunity to study several useful and expressive styles of playing including the flatpick guitar technique of Steve Kaufman, a blues style with Steve James and the fingerstyle guitar technique of Robin Bullock.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for artist producer RUTH MACKENZIE, received $9,000 to produce a concert titled Women of the North: Songs of Passion, which will use vocal sounds and oral poetry from the Scandinavian and Finno-Ugrian traditions of ancient womens songs as springboard and touchstone. The result will be an original dramatized concert conceived and produced by MacKenzie. She is functioning as the creator of a multidisciplinary event featuring original and traditional songs, narrative and movement, the last choreographed by Wynn Fricke.

KARI MARGOLIS and TONY BROWN will travel to Barcelona, Denmark, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Anduze, France, to exchange ideas with colleagues in both formal and informal settings on the topic of physical theater, to undertake specialized voice training, and to develop future performance and teaching opportunities for themselves as individuals and for the Margolis Brown Company.

The Minnesota Dance Alliance, Minneapolis, Minnesota, on behalf of Shawn McConneloug and her Orchestra, received a two-year grant of $16,000 in support of the companys 1996 and 1997 seasons. First year support will be directed toward Tina Concertina...Vera Incessu Patuit Dea (Her very walk revealed the goddess), to be premiered in the fall of 1996.

Fringe Festival organizer ROBERT MCFADDEN will spend 16 days in Edmonton, Alberta, and Victoria, British Columbia, studying Fringe Festival operations, previewing overseas groups and learning the latest developments in festival management.

MILKWEED EDITIONS, a nationally recognized press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $37,000 to support the publication of works by emerging authors within the 1996-97 and the 1997-98 publishing years. Milkweed Editions publishes with the intention of making a humane impact on society, in the belief that literature is a transformative art uniquely able to convey the essential experiences of the human heart and spirit.

The Jerome Foundation approved general support and membership grants of modest size to the MINNESOTA ALLIANCE FOR ARTS IN EDUCATION.

No Press Release Information on this Grant.

The Jerome Foundation authorized a two-year grant of $30,000 to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in continued support of the Jerome Book Arts Fellowship Program, which was initiated in 1984. The Minnesota Center for Book Arts is dedicated to the belief that books are art forms rich in history, craft tradition, artistic energy and literary content. The Fellowship Program helps emerging artists develop their visions in the book form and thereby provides needed experimental voices and alternative approaches in the book arts field. Individuals may receive awards up to $4,000. An exhibition of resulting works takes place at the end of the two-year cycle.

Jerome Foundation Directors made a two-year commitment of $38,000 to PARTS PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the participation of emerging Minnesota and New York City photographers in the exhibition program, and in support of arts criticism in pARTs Journal. pARTs is a rapidly developing nonprofit gallery dedicated to the exhibition and promotion of photography. Its mission is to support excellence and to engage and nurture a broad audience through a program of exhibitions, dialogues, publications and outreach. It stimulates dialogue on the social, aesthetic and technological issues raised by contemporary photographers.