The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $1.25 million grant to the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. “This grant is, simply, transformative,” said MGCCD executive director Marvin Preston IV. “It affirms that our trustees, dancers, faculty, and staff, as well as our pro bono legal teams, have been right to fight so long and so hard to preserve and share Martha Graham's legendary art.” From 2001 until fairly recently, the Center was embroiled in legal challenges brought by former artistic director Ron Protas, who claimed ownership and use of Martha Graham's name and all of her dances; all issued decisions have been resoundingly in the Center's favor (a final appeal of copyright issues is still pending).The Mellon grant has been awarded to achieve strategic goals of the Center, which administers the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and the new Martha Graham Resources. The grant award of $1.25 million includes a requirement that the Center raise $750,000 in matching funds within 2 years. The Martha Graham Dance Company presented its 2004 New York Season from April 14–25, with a live orchestra for all performances, at City Center.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has committed $3 million over 2 years to the Tribeca Film Festival. LMDC stated that the festival was the first major event to be held in Lower Manhattan after the events of September 11, 2001, and that it has attracted thousands of visitors and millions of dollars to the hard-hit downtown area. The grant will help fund the Tribeca Film Festival Guide and various events, including the year-round Tribeca All Access program, the festivalÆs panels and workshops, and the Tribeca Family Festival, an all-day street fair. The LMDC seeks to fund programs that promote the downtown area as a cultural center and contribute to the areaÆs continued economic health. In addition to the LMDC grant, Governor Pataki announced that the festival will receive a $200,000 grant from Empire State Development. The 2004 Tribeca Film Festival will take place from May 1-9. (Back Stage)

This year’s $35,000 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, which honors a lifetime achievement in modern dance choreography, is going to the experimental butoh dancers Eiko + Koma. The pair studied in Tokyo with Kazuo Ohno, a leader in the Japanese avant-garde theater, before becoming U.S. residents in 1976. That same year, “White Dance,” their first U.S. performance, took place at The Japan Society in New York. Since then the duo have been performing their distinctive works, which explore life, death, and nature, around the world. The award ceremony will take place June 27 at Duke University, during the 2004 American Dance Festival (June 10–July 24). – Celeste Sunderland

New Jersey commercial real estate developer and fervid American Ballet Theater supporter Joseph A. Wilson has initiated a new challenge grant to the financially struggling company. The grant will match new or upgraded donations to ABT up to $400,000 in 2004 and 2005, with its fundraising goal as $800,000 for the two years. If the challenge is met, Wilson has pledged to donate an additional $200,000 in 2006 for a total gift of $1.2 million.

ABT also announced that three major corporations have pledged their financial sponsorship. Two of the companies, Countrywide Financial Corporation, the nation’s largest residential mortgage lending firm, and Cole Haan, the accessories label, have joined ABT as official sponsors of the company’s national tour and New York seasons, and the department store Saks Fifth Avenue has been named Leading Corporate Sponsor of ABT’s Costume Fund. ABT has also initiated a new partnership with Equinox Fitness Center. ABT dancers will now be able to stop into 22 Equinox Fitness Centers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, thanks to the partnership, which enhances the company’s “Wellness Program.” The dancers will have individualized fitness programs created for them and access to Equinox personal trainers. – Celeste Sunderland

Doug Wright’s one-actor play I Am My Own Wife was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama on April 5. The play is about the improbable life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite who survived the horrors of the Holocaust only to to struggle for several more decades under the oppressive Communist rule in East Germany. Now in an open commercial run on Broadway, the play premiered in New York at the end of the 2002–2003 season at Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. Star Jefferson Mays, who plays several dozen characters in addition to von Mahlsdorf, won a 2003 Obie Award for his performance. Wright’s best-known play previously is the 1995 Quills, about the Marquis de Sade, later made into a film starring Kate Winslet and Geoffrey Rush. (Back Stage)

Kitty Lunn, a classically trained dancer who became a paraplegic 13 years ago and then resumed her stage career, has won the 2004 Rosetta LeNoire Award. Sharing the honor is her Infinity Dance Theater, a nontraditional ensemble for dancers with disabilities and older dancers founded in 1994. The LeNoire Award, presented April 2, is conferred annually by Actors’ Equity Association to acknowledge “theaters and individuals that have made significant contributions toward increasing diversity and nontraditional casting in theater.” In addition to her pioneering work with Infinity, Lunn is a former councillor with Actors’ Equity and a member of the board of AFTRA and of the tri-union (AEA, SAG, AFTRA) Performers with Disabilities Committee. Through her leadership, several important contract provisions benefiting disabled performers have been successfully negotiated. (Back Stage)

On March 31, American choreographer William Forsythe announced that he has won backing from two states and two cities in Germany to form a new dance company based in Dresden and Frankfurt. After 20 years as artistic director of the Frankfurt Ballet, Forsythe decided in August 2002 to dissolve the company, citing crippling disagreements with the city government. Frankfurt officials were widely criticised for their reluctance to continue funding the company, which under Forsythe had become the city’s best-known cultural export and one of Europe’s foremost dance companies. Now, in an unusual arrangement, the future Forsythe Company will be sponsored by Frankfurt and the nearby state of Saxony as well as by Dresden and its adjoining Hesse state, in former East Germany. As of next year the company will be based in the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt and in the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden. After months of uncertainty, the crisis seems to have been resolved. Said Forsythe, “I won’t believe it until the ink is dry.” (New York Times)

New York City Ballet announced in February the promotions of dancers Ashley Bouder, Megan Fairchild, and Stephen Hanna to soloists. Bouder studied at the School of American Ballet, became an apprentice with NYCB in 2000, and four months later joined the corps de ballet. In 2000 she received SAB’s Mae L. Wein Award; in 2002–2003, she was named NYCB’s Janice Levin Dancer, an honor given each year to a promising member of the corps. Fairchild also trained at SAB, became a NYCB apprentice in 2001, and joined the corps in 2002. She received the Wein Award in 2001. Hanna studied at SAB, became an apprentice with NYCB in 1997, and joined the corps later that year.

In honor of tap dancer Gregory Hines, The American Tap Dance Foundation, together with the Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, has established the Gregory Hines Collection Of American Tap Dance. The archive will include film, video, print, and photography, in an effort to preserve, acquire, and share with the public the heritage of tap dance. – Celeste Sunderland

The ex-ABT dancer Rachel S. Moore has been named ABT’s executive director. Moore, who danced with ABT from 1984–1988, will direct the overall administration of the company and work with artistic director Kevin McKenzie on long-term planning. A Davis, CA, native and Brown University graduate, Moore most recently served as Director of the Center for Dance Education at Boston Ballet. – Celeste Sunderland

The dance journalist and choreographer Wendy Perron has been named editor in chief of Dance Magazine and Young Dancer magazine, replacing K.C. Patrick. Perron has been an editor of the 76-year-old Dance Magazine for four years. (NY Times)

At the Paul Taylor Dance Company, executive director Ross Kramberg is stepping down after 12 years. During his tenure, the company’s budget rose from two to $4.7 million, the junior company Taylor 2 was established, and the Repertory Preservation Project and the New Works Fund were established and met their goals. Kramberg was also instrumental in the making of the 1998 documentary Dancemaker. Kramberg started with the Taylor Company as tour manager in 1982, became company manager three years later, general manager in 1990, and co-executive director in 1991. (NY Times)

Mark Russell, for two decades the executive director of P.S. 122, announced in December his resignation, effective June 2004. Russell, who co-founded the venue with performance artist Tim Miller, elected not to comment on press reports that his resignation was prompted by a faction of P.S. 122’s board unhappy with his management style. During Russell’s tenure, P.S. 122 grew from an edgy venue for alternative performance into one of the premier experimental theatrical institutions in the U.S., along the way discovering, developing, and promoting such important performance artists as John Leguizamo, Blue Man Group, Eric Bogosian, Reno, Ronald K. Brown, Danny Hoch, Penny Arcade, Karen Finley, Doug Varone, Ron Athey, Ann Carlson, Will Power, Richard Maxwell, Eddie Izzard, Spalding Gray, and Marga Gomez. (Back Stage)

Malachi Favors, 76, Jazz Bassist

Jazz bassist Malachi Favors, for 35 years a member of the avant-garde Art Ensemble of Chicago, died January 30 in Chicago. He was 76; the cause was pancreatic cancer. Favors, born in Chicago, served in the Army during the Korean War. In Chicago in the late 1950s, he studied with the bassists Wilbur Ware and Israel Crosby, worked with the pianists Andrew Hill and King Fleming, and met the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell. In the mid-1960s Favors and Mitchell moved into the circle of pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, whose Experimental Band sparked the founding of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an influential cooperative society in jazz. Mitchell soon started the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which included Favors, drummer Don Moye, trumpeter Lester Bowie, and saxophonist Joseph Jarman. A remarkable group that combined traditional elements of jazz and blues, West African music, chanting, ritual, abstract sound, and silence, the Art Institute of Chicago was a landmark group in experimental jazz. It combined theatricality with consummate musicianship; Favors, who sometimes added Maghostut—an Egyptian word meaning “I am the host”—to his name, formed a boldly swinging rhythm section with Moye. Between 1969 and 1971 the group toured successfully in Europe and recorded more than a dozen albums. In 1972 the Art Ensemble of Chicago started recording with Atlantic Records, thus raising its profile considerably. In 1978 the group switched to ECM Records, and later recorded for the Japanese label DIW. The group’s last recording (without Bowie, who died in 1999) was The Meeting (Pi Records). (New York Times)