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Dance Magazine, June, 1999

BROWN'S L'ORFEO AT BAM

Trisha Brown has graced the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House many times as a dancer and choreographer. Performances of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at BAM, June 10 to 13, mark the postmodern choreographer's first appearance as an opera director. Brown also choreographed the work, setting movement for both the singers and her company. The innovative production has spare yet colorful sets, and employs both of two endings written by Monteverdi. "I always have been a director of my choreography," said Brown prior to the work's premiere in Brussels in 1998. "The bigger step is to go from abstraction to narrative. Who would have known after all these years of arch abstract choreography that there lay behind it a closet narrativist?"

* A Life in Dance provides comprehensive and clear advice on how choreographers and dancers can create archives to preserve their artistic legacies. Important information for any artist, the booklet, a publication of The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, also deals with the urgency of documentation and legal planning for artists with AIDS. For a booklet, contact The Estate Project at (310) 652-1282 and www.artistswithaids.org, or Alliance for the Arts at (212) 947-6340 and www.allianceforarts.org.

LIVING ROOM PROJECT WINDS UP SEASON IN COMMUNITY GARDEN

This year's Living Room Project culminates on June 26 with a free performance and shared meal (donated by East Village restaurants) at the amphitheater of the East Village community garden, La Plaza Cultural. The Project, developed in 1997 by Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks (right) and Danspace Project, unites performers with downtown residents and business owners. Hosts are paid a stipend to prepare a meal for two to three dancers and guests of their choice. Food and conversation is followed by a 15- to 20-minute informal dance performance. "The Living Room Project was developed with the goal of creating relationships among artists, the East Village community, and Danspace Project," says Barbara Bryan, associate director at Danspace.

DUKE FOUNDATION AWARDS $8.65 MILLION

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation awarded grants in April to five performing arts institutions: Brooklyn Academy of Music ($3.5 million), Brooklyn's 651 ARTS ($1.5 million), the National Dance Project (NDP) of the New England Foundation for the Arts ($2 million), Spoleto Festival USA ($1.5 million), and New York City's Theatre Communications Group ($150,000). The Duke Foundation, which awards grants to arts presenting and service organizations, has more than $1.4 billion in assets.

The NDP will use the Duke grant, along with a recent $500,000 grant from the NEA, to fund commissions and tours of new works by contemporary choreographers. This year the NDP awarded nearly $700,000 to fund touring initiatives for four commissioned works as well as for eighteen companies, including Ballet Hispanico, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Meredith Monk, Philadanco, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

BAM will use the grant for programming and to increase its endowment. 651 ARTS will earmark $1 million to establish an endowment and $500,000 to commission and present dance works by black choreographers through its dance series entitled Black Dance: Tradition and Transformation.

PARIS COMPETITION WITHHOLDS AWARDS

The first edition of Paris's newest dance event, the International Classical Choreography Competition, got off to a chilly start in March when the international jury, presided over by Patrice Bart of the Paris Opera Ballet, announced its selection: Five of the seven young entrants were eliminated. Neither the Grand nor the First Place prizes were awarded: FF40,000 and FF30,000, respectively ($7,500 and $5,000). France's First Lady, Bernadette Chirac, presented the Second Place Prize (FF20,000) to Austrian Jorg Mannes, 29, for Ensemble, a ballet to the music of Sergei Prokofiev performed by dancers from the Dosseldorf and Monchengladbach Ballets. German choreographer Dmitrij Simkin, 35, was awarded the encouragement prize (FF15,000) for his Kafkaesque As Long As You Lust, to the industrial music of Alfred Schnittke. Among the entrants in the competition were American Hazel Sabas-Gower, 37, who presented her sinuous Deconstructing Gershwin to the music of Herbie Hancock and Dave Grusin, and Norwegian Teet Kask, 30, whose Ursula X was surprisingly contemporary for this otherwise classical competition. The competition was created and organized by Cyril Lafaurie, the director of the city's Concours International de Danse.

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Hotline was reported by Susan Amoruso (Living Room Project), Karyn Bauer (Paris Competition and Dupont), Rita Felciano (Joe Goode).

PAVLOVA DANCER CELEBRATES 100TH BIRTHDAY

Beatrice Collenette, who danced with Anna Pavlova and founded the Collenette School of Ballet in Pasadena, California, will celebrate her 100th birthday on June 30. As a young English girl, Collenette studied and performed with Pavlova from 1912 to 1918. Collenette toured the globe with the company, performing in Europe and South America as well as at the The Big Show at the New York Hippodrome, alongside acrobats and elephants.