{"id":144126,"date":"2022-02-03T14:51:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T19:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=144126"},"modified":"2022-02-03T17:27:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T22:27:41","slug":"bates-dance-festival-receives-two-grants-totally-190000-from-the-national-endowment-for-the-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/02\/03\/bates-dance-festival-receives-two-grants-totally-190000-from-the-national-endowment-for-the-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates Dance Festival receives two grants totaling $190,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced two major awards to the Bates Dance Festival, including an American Rescue Plan award of $150,000 designed to help the festival recover from the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The second award of $40,000 is for general support to the festival, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and will be used to support artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Shoshona Currier directs the Bates Dance Festival. (Photograph by Heidi Kirn)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The $150,000 award is part of a nearly $58 million assistance package the NEA is distributing to 567 arts organizations nationwide. All recipients can use the funding to save jobs, fund operations and facilities, purchase health and safety supplies or use the money to fund marketing and promotional efforts to encourage attendance and participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director of the Bates Dance Festival Shoshona Currier said the American Rescue Plan award will be invaluable as they prepare for the summer festival. Currier learned of the $40,000 grant earlier in January. It’s one of 15 awards, totaling $265,000, designated for Maine groups by the NEA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationwide, more than 1,800 organizations applied for these grants. Currier said the funds will be used for artist fees for performances this summer. Some of the upcoming festival\u2019s artists originally planned projects for 2020 that were postponed because of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis recognition by the National Endowment for the Arts is very welcome and richly deserved,\u201d said President Clayton Spencer. \u201cShoni has provided leadership for the Bates Dance Festival that has been creative and inspired from an artistic point of view, and remarkably pragmatic in adapting to the challenging realities of producing live performances during the pandemic. This funding is particularly timely as we look forward to bringing the festival back to campus in person this summer, with exciting and wide-ranging programs for dance students, performing artists and audiences alike.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Appearing
Creativity was the watchword during last summer\u2019s pandemic-modified Bates Dance Festival, which featured alternative locations, both indoors and outside, due to pandemic restrictions. During a rehearsal last July for a performance of a work in development, Being Future Being<\/em>, in Kennedy Park, choreographer Emily Johnson works with a dancer swathed in quilts. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Currier, who took over the position of director of the festival in 2017<\/a> after the retirement of longtime director Laura Faure, also noted how vulnerable performers were to the setbacks of the pandemic. \u201cThis pandemic has been especially cruel to artists, gig-workers, and so many essential participants in our creative industries,\u201d Currier said. \u201cRelief funding for organizations is so essential in creating stability in the field in the future. And hopefully we\u2019ve learned from these years and are creating better systems than what were previously in place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a canceled 2020 season, the festival \u2014 with limits on the number of students and performances \u2014 returned in 2021. Currier put her creativity to use, coming up with alternative locations, both indoors and outside, to adjust to visitor restrictions on the Bates campus. She turned the side of Schaeffer Theatre into a movie screen to show films outside. For a performance by a land and water protector and activist for justice, Emily Johnson, Currier turned to Kennedy Park in Lewiston. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An interactive video installation<\/a> at L\/A Arts Gallery invited participants in, one at a time, for 20 minute interactions. At Simard Payne Park Amphitheater, live salsa music inspired dancing by audience members and also served as a venue for Vanessa Anspaugh\u2019s audience-interactive climate change-related performance \u201cFunerals for the Ocean<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artists and dancers \u201cadapted constantly” last summer, said BDF Director Shoni Currier, offering a \u201ctestament to what can happen within a creative practice in the most desperate of situations.\u201d Here, viewers sat on College Street \u2014 helpfully closed for the occasion \u2014 to view a film, Communion<\/em>, projected on a screen on the porch of Schaeffer Theatre. The film was created during the height of the pandemic lockdown by Janessa Clark, who asked each of 40 dancers to submit a video of themselves dancing. Each video was then combined with another dancer\u2019s video to create 20 \u201cdistanced duets.\u201d (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The festival also commissioned writing by dancers, to offer opportunities while theaters were closed. The next season of The Future Impossible<\/a>, an anthology curated by choreographer Raja Feather Kelly for the Bates Dance Festival, will be released this month. The anthology was a project born out of the pandemic, meant to engage dancers while they were separated physically. It features 16 artists responding to prompts in essays, interviews or other prose over the course of a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will continue outdoor events and writing projects and finding multiple ways to support artists,\u201d Currier says. \u201cBut our hope is we\u2019ll be primarily back on campus in 2022, where the festival started. No matter what happens though, this funding from the NEA is going to make all the difference. I think it\u2019s safe to say, we\u2019re all dancing for joy \u2014 and relief \u2014 about this.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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