Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Carpetbag Theatre, St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation, Appalshop Traditional Music Program
Arist: Carpetbag Theatre Ensemble
Title: "Between a Ballad and a Blues"
Award Amount: $11,000
Project Description: "Between a Ballad and a Blues" is centered around the story of Black String Band musician Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong and the legendary Tennessee Chocolate Drops. "Between a Ballad and a Blues" begins in the 1930’s at the heyday of stringband music and takes us thru its’ revival in the 1970’s to Howard’s death in 2003 at the age of ninety four.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: New WORLD Theater, Pangea World Theater
Arist: D’Lo
Title: "Ramble-ations"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: D’Lo will further the development of her one-woman theater piece "Ramble-ations," reflecting the experiences of immigrants, people of color, queers, and other “outsiders” in America’s cultural and political landscape.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Museum of Contemporary Art, Dance Theater Workshop, ODC Theater
Arist: Donna Uchizono & Co.
Title: "As eye see it"
Award Amount: $11,000
Project Description: Choreographer Donna Uchizono will create “As eye see it” (working title), a new evening-length work for four dancers, with an original commissioned score by composer Fred Frith, and collaboration with video artist Michael Casselli and lighting designer Jane Shaw.  “As eye see it” juxtaposes virtual reality with the visceral power of dance’s physical reality, emphasizing the emotional power of “real” physical contact and intimacy.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Appalshop, Berea College Appalachian Center
Arist: Fossil Fools
Title: "Unlimited Supply!"
Award Amount: $10,000
Project Description: "Unlimited Supply!" combines performance pieces with media installations and sustainable technology to reveal the invisible infrastructure of humans and industry that meets our society’s increasing demands for energy. 

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Contemporary Dance Theater, Dance Cleveland
Arist: Jane Comfort & Co.
Title: "Evil Other"
Award Amount: $9,000 
Project Description: Jane Comfort embarks upon a new dance theater work for her company of seven dancer/singer/actors that examines both our need for the “evil other” and our unwillingness to witness the degradations we inflict upon this group.  Watching the volitional humiliation of reality shows is much more fun than facing reality itself.   

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Dance Theater Workshop, Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents
Arist: John Jasperse Company
Title: "Becky, Jodi, and John"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: "Becky, Jodi and John” will be a work for three dancers, including Jasperse. The project will address the longevity of the performer.  Dance, unlike most of the performing arts, places a strong emphasis on youth and has little work for seasoned performers once they enter into their forties and beyond.  Jasperse and his peers will address through this project the issue of sustaining a performing career past forty.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Florida Dance Association, Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents
Arist: Katherine Kramer
Title: "Stop Look Listen"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: "Stop Look Listen" is a full-evening dance and music piece for nine performers, directed and choreographed by Katherine Kramer that integrates tap dance, percussion, movement improvisation, jazz music and poetry. The work stems from a concern for the lack of human connection and interpersonal communication in the world today.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Miami Dade College, DiverseWorks
Arist: Michelle Ellsworth
Title: "The Objectification of Things" (working title)
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: “The Objectification of Things” is part performance art, part ritual and part techno extravaganza.  Its purpose is to illuminate the importance and impact mere objects have in our lives and to give something back to them.  Too often “things” are dismissed as soulless or inanimate.  To these familiar charges, Ellsworth reminds us that no person, or animal has the reliability and predictability of most objects.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Myrna Loy Center/Helena Presents, On the Boards
Arist: Scott/Powell Performance
Title: "Geography"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: Creation of a new work by Scott/Powell Performance titled "Geography" with choreography by Mary Sheldon Scott set on her company and music by Jarrad Powell, composer, and Robert Campbell, visual artist. Geography" is a way of thinking about relationships and about location, and how we map and navigate our own changing internal and external world.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Out North, VSA arts of Alaska, Highways Performance Space, Legacies of War, Public Interest Project
Arist: TeAda Productions
Title: "Refugee Nation"
Award Amount: $11,000
Project Description: Leilani Chan and Ova Saopeng will develop an inter-disciplinary theater performance, "Refugee Nation." It explores the impact of war, refugee status, and global politics on Laotian Americans. Based on stories collected in several states, it will incorporate South East Asian martial arts and dance techniques with contemporary theater, visual art, and video.  It brings voice to part of the Asian American diaspora that is yet to be included in the American experience.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Swarthmore College
Arist: The Riot Group
Title: "Hearts of Man"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: "Hearts of Man," a modern-day New Jersey tragedy in blank verse, concerns Sex, Justice and the American Way. Tangled up in red-tape and experiencing moral vertigo, two sides collide in a boilerplate coutroom drama where Constitutional Law meets the “Male Circumcision Defense” in an effort to uncover what lies in the hearts of men.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: Walker Art Center, The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
Arist: Young Jean Lee
Title: "Church"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: At a time when religion has taken on such a heightened presence in American society, and the place of Christianity has become so polarized, the new theatre work examines and provocatively dismantles stereotypes around Christianity in general, and evangelical church services specifically, from multiple points of view.

 

Lead Partner/Co-commissioners: On the Boards, PICA
Arist: Zoe Scofield
Title: "the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t"
Award Amount: $9,000
Project Description: "the devil you know if better than the devil you don’t" is a new evening-length dance work conceived and directed by Seattle-based choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual/video designer Juniper Shuey that uses the group dynamics of children and teenagers to explore how people gravitate into the roles of leader, followers and outcast and how these clearly defined relationships and rules are diluted by the responisbilities of career, family and ambitions.