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National Endowment for the Arts: New grants to dance organizations


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The National Endowment for the Arts has just announced a new round of grants in dance. 88 grants have been made totaling $2,525,000. For the complete list, dance awards start on p. 29:

http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/Fall_2014_Art_Works_Grants_by_Discipline_FINAL.pdf

Of special interest to ballet lovers:

  • Atlanta Ballet: $30,000 for "Cacti" by Alexander Ekman
  • Ballet Memphis: $10,000 for new work titled "I Am"
  • Ballet Metropolitan: $20,000 for American masters (Robbins, Liang, Kudelka, Nixon)
  • ABT: $90,000 for Sleeping Beauty, including work by Ratmansky with a dance notator to reconstruct Petipa's original choreography
  • Boston Ballet: $50,000 for work by Jorma Elo and Helen Pickett
  • Charlotte Ballet: $10,000 for new ballet by Bonnefoux and Ingram
  • Cincinnati Ballet: $20,000 for "Mozart's Requiem" by Adam Hougland
  • Dance Theatre of Harlem: $30,000 for new work by Byrd and Garland
  • Houston Ballet: $50,000 for "Zodiac" by Stanton Welch and new work by Mark Morris
  • Joffrey Ballet: $20,000 for "Tulle" by Alexander Ekman
  • Joyce Theater Foundation: $100,000 for Dance Program, including several ballet principals and soloists
  • Miami City Ballet: $50,000 for new work by Justin Peck
  • New Orleans Ballet Association: $40,000 for presentation of dance groups, including some
  • New York City Ballet: $100,000 for restaging of "La Sylphide"
  • Pacific Northwest Ballet: $50,000 for All Forsythe program
  • Pennsylvania Ballet: $40,000 for Forsythe's "The Second Detail"
  • Richmond Ballet: $20,000 for original ballets as part of New Works Festival
  • Smuin Ballet: $10,000 for new work by Hougland and work by Ammon
  • Washington Ballet: $20,000 for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"

Wondering about ballet companies that didn't get awards? The Endowments never release the names of rejected applicants, so there's no way to know if they applied and were rejected or if they declined to apply this year.

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I found the Joyce entry very interesting:

Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. (aka The Joyce Theater; The Joyce)

$100,000 New York, NY

To support the Dance Presentation Program, which will feature a mix of established and emerging dance companies from the United States and abroad. Dance companies may include . . . a full-evening work by Twyla Tharp. . . . The performances will take place at The Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater.

The Joyce has been presenting a program each April at the Koch. This suggests that they may be presenting a new Tharp work at the Koch. Has anyone heard any info about this new Tharp project?

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I found the ABT Ratmansky grant interesting. As we now know he's working to reconstruct Petipa choreography, the new "Sleeping Beauty" suddenly became more interesting to me. I hope they present some educational information in the program, seminars, etc. to give us some insight into that history.

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I found the ABT Ratmansky grant interesting. As we now know he's working to reconstruct Petipa choreography, the new "Sleeping Beauty" suddenly became more interesting to me. I hope they present some educational information in the program, seminars, etc. to give us some insight into that history.

He's been working with Doug Fullington on the upcoming Paquita at the Bavarian State company, getting as much from the Stephanov notation as they can. Doug, do you know any details about the Sleeping Beauty project?

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I wonder if ABT is annoyed that NYCB got $10K more than ABT.

There's no way to know from that list what each originally requested. It's possible ABT only requested $90,000 and could only justify that much in its budget. For those who are really curious (and perhaps other ballet companies thinking of applying next year), all funded grant proposals are subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). NEA does have the right to charge reasonable labor and copying charges, but for people who want to know what successful grant proposals look like, it's worth the investment. Here's the NEA information page on FOIA: http://arts.gov/freedom-information-act-guide (Of course, the judgments of the people on the review panel have a lot to do with the final decisions, too.)

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I found the Joyce entry very interesting:

Joyce Theater Foundation, Inc. (aka The Joyce Theater; The Joyce)

$100,000 New York, NY

To support the Dance Presentation Program, which will feature a mix of established and emerging dance companies from the United States and abroad. Dance companies may include . . . a full-evening work by Twyla Tharp. . . . The performances will take place at The Joyce Theater and Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater.

The Joyce has been presenting a program each April at the Koch. This suggests that they may be presenting a new Tharp work at the Koch. Has anyone heard any info about this new Tharp project?

Tharp is heading for a major anniversary year in 2015, and has been thinking for awhile about what kind of revivals she might want to pursue alongside new creations -- this may indeed be part of that celebration.

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The names of the FY2015 dance panelists are public information, although there's no way to know which panel reviewed which group of proposals:

http://arts.gov/grants/panel/2015/dance-fy-2015-grants-panelists

The Federal Fiscal Year for 2015 actually started on October 1, 2014, although it appears Congress has yet to decide on the FY15 budget.

NEA Panelists generally serve staggered three-year terms.

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California, thanks so much for the link to the awards. It's a great look at what's happening with presenters and producers around the country. I still miss the days when the Endowment gave money directly to individual choreographers, though. Or maybe I just miss the art they would have made...

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I still miss the days when the Endowment gave money directly to individual choreographers, though. Or maybe I just miss the art they would have made...

NEA has gotten burned on individual fellowships over the years (e.g., the poetry grant to Erica Jong, when she wrote "Fear of Flying," and Congress went ballistic). And the so-called NEA Four were performance artists slated for individual grants. As the NEA budgets have been slashed, this was a type of grant they were not unhappy to reduce or eliminate.

Also note that many of those grants say they have conditions requiring NEA approval. They are always nervous about block grants to presenters and need to keep a short leash on the decisions those presenters make about precisely which groups and works get NEA money. This nervousness traces to the Mapplethorpe controversy in the late 90s. NEA didn't actually decide to fund those works by Mapplethorpe. Rather, they had given a grant to a presenter that made that decision. But NEA money was involved, so they took the blame and needed to pull back on so-called "re-grants" to presenters.

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I got a laugh out of the paragraph for Mark Morris. MMDG is getting $70k which will be used, in part, to translate the ballet Pacific from en pointe to bare feet. (The ballet was created for SFB, and it will now be incorporated into the MMDG rep.)

How much money/hours of work could that project possiblly entail?

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I got a laugh out of the paragraph for Mark Morris. MMDG is getting $70k which will be used, in part, to translate the ballet Pacific from en pointe to bare feet. (The ballet was created for SFB, and it will now be incorporated into the MMDG rep.)

How much money/hours of work could that project possiblly entail?

But that grant includes an entirely new work by Morris as well, so they could probably justify the budget that way.

To support the creation and presentation of a new work by choreographer Mark Morris and the restaging of "Pacific." The new work will be featured in Tanglewood Music Center's 75th anniversary celebration. The Music Center is commissioning as many as 35 new works from its fellow or faculty alumni - Mark Morris being one them - the only one not a composer. The new dance work will be set to music written by an alumnus of Tanglewood and accompanied by current Tanglewood fellows and faculty. "Pacific" is set to two movements of Lou Harrison's "Trio for Violin, Cello & Piano." It is a ballet for nine dancers that was originally created for San Francisco Ballet in 1995. The dance, created en pointe, will be translated to bare feet for Mark Morris Dance Group. Both works will be performed on the company's national tour.
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We're seeing the barefoot version of Pacific in Seattle later in the spring -- I'm really looking forward to seeing how it translates. But then, I look forward to seeing almost any of Morris' work!

And yes, when you look at the description of the grant, it's for both the 'translation' and the new work.

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I still miss the days when the Endowment gave money directly to individual choreographers, though. Or maybe I just miss the art they would have made...

NEA has gotten burned on individual fellowships over the years (e.g., the poetry grant to Erica Jong, when she wrote "Fear of Flying," and Congress went ballistic). And the so-called NEA Four were performance artists slated for individual grants. As the NEA budgets have been slashed, this was a type of grant they were not unhappy to reduce or eliminate.

Also note that many of those grants say they have conditions requiring NEA approval. They are always nervous about block grants to presenters and need to keep a short leash on the decisions those presenters make about precisely which groups and works get NEA money. This nervousness traces to the Mapplethorpe controversy in the late 90s. NEA didn't actually decide to fund those works by Mapplethorpe. Rather, they had given a grant to a presenter that made that decision. But NEA money was involved, so they took the blame and needed to pull back on so-called "re-grants" to presenters.

Oh, I know -- I was around for all those controversies and they were incredibly destructive.

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uh....NEA gives money to American companies for productions of The Sleeping Beauty and La Sylphide? I suppose they made a case for using it for outreach somewhere in America, but does it make sense? What happened to commissioning American choreographers from "America's ballet company" with Americans' tax dollars?

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