2 Leeway Grantees receive Dance Advance Grants from Pew
Philadelphia, PA—The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has awarded $812,000 through Dance Advance to 12 dance projects, representing seven individual artists, three dance companies, and two presenting organizations in the Philadelphia area. Two individual artists are prior recipients of funding from Leeway.
Dance Advance grants are awarded in all genres of dance to applicants who reside in the five-county region of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Proposals were evaluated in a two-step process by a panel of dance professionals and leaders, according to criteria of artistic excellence, project excellence, and project impact. For full lists of grant adjudication panelists and LOI (Letter of Intent) evaluators, and their respective credentials, please visit pcah.us/dance.
Dance Advance Director Bill Bissell notes, “The 2012 grantees explore performance practices that push against traditional boundaries of how and where dances are made, seen, or engaged with by audiences. Their projects reflect changes taking place in the field of dance both nationally and internationally, and connect dance and dancing to the realm of ideas. This has rich implications for both the artform and for Philadelphia audiences.”
The 2 Leeway awardees are:
Germaine Ingram (LTA '08)
$25,000 | Individual, Planning Grant
Germaine Ingram, a tap dancer, choreographer, and 2010 Pew Fellow in the Arts, will collaborate with improvisational dancer and choreographer Leah Stein for a year-long laboratory to examine how dance can address historical, social, and political themes. For the past three years, Ingram worked on The Spirits Break to Freedom, an upcoming performance that explores the history of slavery at Philadelphia’s President’s House. That project has pushed her to look beyond tap for new tools of expression. Ingram and Stein will work with artists and dance professionals who share their interest in researching and experimenting with new methods for conveying history and social issues through movement, including Ananya Chatterjea, executive director of Ananya Dance Theatre in Minneapolis, and Peter DiMuro, former producing artistic director of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
Viji Rao (LTA '11, ACG '08)
$25,000 | Individual, Planning Grant
Viji Rao is a dancer trained in Bharatanatyam, a classical South Indian dance form marked by expressive hand gestures and elaborate rhythmic patterns. After 10 years in Philadelphia, spent mostly collaborating with dancers and companies from other traditions, Rao will develop a series of solo works that expands upon her artistic roots in South Indian dance. She will develop three distinctive dances based on incarnations of the Hindu goddess Devi in collaboration with three choreographers: Hari Krishnan, artistic director of INDANCE, Toronto, who specializes in experimental exploration of Bharatanatyam traditions; C.V. Chandrasekhar, one of India’s most highly regarded Bharatanatyam practitioners who creates choreography within the canon of traditional vocabulary; and Delhi’s Santosh Nair, who will create a contemporary work based in the generations-old martial art form of Chhau. Members of local Indian and dance communities will be invited to attend a session that will introduce the work of these choreographers and demonstrate new approaches to classical forms.