{"id":151249,"date":"2023-01-27T11:49:59","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T16:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=151249"},"modified":"2023-02-07T10:20:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T15:20:35","slug":"bates-dance-festival-earns-nea-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2023\/01\/27\/bates-dance-festival-earns-nea-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates Dance Festival earns $40K NEA grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Bates Dance Festival has been recommended by the National Endowment for the Arts to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $40,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The grant will support the 2023 edition of the internationally renowned performance series<\/a>, which this year takes place on the Bates campus July 7\u201329. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bates
The 2022 Bates Dance Festival hosted a performance along Lake Andrews by Fist & Heel Performance Group, a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are very grateful for the continued support from the National Endowment for the Arts,\u201d said Bates Dance Festival Director Shoshona Currier. \u201cThis funding helps us bring talented, diverse, world-class artists to Lewiston to share their technique, choreography, and experiences  in order to inspire our community here in Maine as well as the next generation of dancers and dance makers from around the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The festival is one of 19 Maine arts organizations that learned about grants from the NEA this month. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards<\/a> totaling nearly $28.8 million as part of NEA\u2019s first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u201cWe are very grateful for the continued support from the National Endowment for the Arts,\u201d said Bates Dance Festival Director Shoshona Currier, seen introducing a dance performance during the 2022 festival. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,\u201d said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson. \u201cProjects such as the Bates Dance Festival strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year marks the 41st season for the Bates Dance Festival, which draws dance students from all over the world, and from the Bates student body itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An upper-level Bates course, \u201cBates Dance Festival,\u201d provides students an opportunity to participate in the festival\u2019s  Professional Training Program and receive invaluable technical training across multiple dance disciplines and theoretical practices from leading dance scholars, artists, and practitioners in their fields<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shura
Shura Baryshnikov<\/a>, a multimodal artist who maintains an active international teaching practice at festivals and training institutions, conducts a Dance Festival workshop outside the Gray Athletic Building on July 21, 2022, that investigated techniques for collaborative making and co-authorship of choreographies. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, about a half-dozen Bates students earned academic credit for participating in the festival. And typically, Bates also offers a paid Purposeful Work internship at the annual festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currier, who joined the festival as director in 2017, has worked to broaden the festival\u2019s reach pre-pandemic by staging performances in the streets of Portland, and during the pandemic, made adaptations that featured dancers in open spaces in the local community, including downtown Lewiston parks and the banks of the Androscoggin River. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
During the 2021 festival, Purposeful Work intern Jamari Amrham \u201922 of Fontana, Calif., escorts a dancer swathed in quilts through traffic on Pine Street in Lewiston during a tech rehearsal for a site-specific work by choreographer Emily Johnson and her company, Catalyst, that evokes themes of Indigenous power and place. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got some great performances and works in progress showings planned for this summer as well, and are committed to keeping the festival as accessible as possible, \u201d Currier said. \u201cThe festival serves approximately 5,000 people each year, and I cannot wait to share more details about our 2023 summer season with everyone soon!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bates

A dancer with Fist & Heel Performance Group performs at the Keigwin Amphitheater along Lake Andrews during the 2022 Bates Dance Festival. Fist & Heel is a Brooklyn-based dance company that investigates the intersections of cultural anthropology and movement practices and believes in the potential of the body as a valid means for knowing. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual Bates Dance Festival helps to “strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1283,"featured_media":151261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"The grant will support the internationally renowned performance series, taking place July 7\u201329, 2023.","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,7,243,234],"tags":[1407],"class_list":["post-151249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-alumni","category-annual-events","category-teaching-education","tag-bates-dance-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151249"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151526,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151249\/revisions\/151526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}