New York City's budget for fiscal year 2005 includes a partial breakdown of the $101.15 million it allots to the city's Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), 33 arts facilities funded by the city government. This funding comes through the city's Department of Cultural Affairs. Specific figures have been provided for the Brooklyn Academy of Music ($3.12 million, a drop of $61,361 from 2004's $3.18 million) and the New York Shakespeare Festival, which includes the Public Theater and Central Park's Delacorte Theater ($1.090 million, a drop of $6, 614 from 2004's $1.096 million). Funding for Carnegie Hall, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center (housing New York City Opera and New York City Ballet), Queens Theater in the Park, and 10 other facilities appears in the budget as a lump sum appropriation of $15.5 million, an increase of $316,935 over the previous fiscal year. Overall, CIG funding rose by about $5 million from fiscal year 2004. That increase could be in response to a survey released by the CIGs in the spring showing that funding reductions over the past three years have had significant negative results, including a decline in endowment income; a decline in private giving; significant job reduction (over 700 positions lost in an employment base of about 10,000); sharply increased expenses for insurance and security; across the board decreases in attendance, subscriptions, and memberships; and a large number of institutions experiencing operating deficits. Cultural programs received an appropriation of just under $19 million in New York City's budget for fiscal year 2005, an increase of just over $800,000 from 2004.

2004 JPMorgan Chase Grants Rise In July the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York (A.R.T./NY) announced that the JPMorgan Chase Fund for Small Theaters, which is one of the organization's primary funding projects, would be more than doubled this year. In 2003, the program, which offers general operating grants to midsize companies, gave $65,000 to 20 groups. This year, supplemented by additional support from the New York Times Company Foundation, it will be able to give $155,000 out to a total of 34 companies. In 2003, grants ranged between $2,000 and $5,000. For 2004, the maximum amount has increased to $7,500. The program's elegibility parameters have also changed. Previously, it funded theater companies with annual budgets between $100,000 and $300,000; this year, the ceiling has been raised to include companies with budgets of up to $500,000 annually. The fund supports middle-level theater groups, one of the most underfunded sectors in the nonprofit theater industry. These companies typically are too big or established to receive startup funding, yet too small, in terms of budget, staffing, or even programming, to win the very large grants offered by large foundations and donors. Since it was founded in 1998, the JPMorgan Chase Fund for Small Theaters has distributed a total of $521,000 to nonprofit theaters. Among this year's recipients are Abingdon Theater Company, Chashama, Classical Theater of Harlem, Dixon Place, Pick Up Performance Company, and Theater by the Blind. (Back Stage)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced in July a new round of grants totaling $1,157,500, divided among 39 nonprofit theaters. After 9/11 the foundation created a $50 million fund to "assist New York cultural and performing arts organizations" directly affected by the terrorist attacks. Like the theater world's part of those funds, the new round of grants will be distributed by the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York (A.R.T./NY). Unlike most nonprofit arts grants, the Mellon grants support, not a specific project or program, but general operating expenses such as electricity. Distributed on an annual basis, the grants cover a 2-year period. While 15 companies were invited to apply, other companies sought grants through the foundation's first-ever open application process. The Mellon Foundation is one of this country's biggest arts supporters, giving more than $15 million annually to performing arts focused nonprofits. The 15 companies invited to apply for cash grants (totaling $1,025,000) were Atlantic Theater Company, Classic Stage Company, Dixon Place, HERE, Ma-Yi Theater Company, MCC Theater, Music-Theater Group, the Pearl Theater Company, Pregones Theater, Primary Stages, P.S. 122, Signature Theater Company, the Soho Repertory Theater, Target Margin Theater, and the Vineyard Theater. The 24 companies that won grants through the open application process (totaling $132,500) were the Builders Association, the Cherry Lane Theater, the Flea Theater, the Foundry Theater, INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center, the Irish Repertory Theater, La MaMa E.T.C., Labyrinth Theater Company, the Lark Theater Company, Mabou Mines, the Mint Theater Company, Naked Angels, the New Group, the New York City Players, Pick Up Performance Company, the Play Company, Ping Chong & Company, the Present Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the SITI Company, Thalia Spanish Theater, the Wooster Group, the Working Theater, and Young Playwrights. (Back Stage)

BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange announced in June its 2004/2005 Artists in Residence and Space Grant recipients. One of the few presenting organizations in Brooklyn with its own performance space, the center provides developing artists with the use of three spaces in two locations, suitable for theater, dance, and performance work. Theater Artists in Residence Allison Farrow and Fernano Maneca will develop new text-based performance work during the first year of their residency, joining second-year Dance Artists in Residence Melissa Briggs and Nami Yamamoto. The residency includes 200 hours of free rehearsal space and at least one performance run as part of the BAX season (January May). As well as developing original work, artists in residence also have the opportunity to curate a program for the BAX season. The program is funded in part by NYSCA and NYC's Department of Cultural Affairs. Space Grant recipients are Daryl Owens/Renee Archibald, Sigal Bergman, and Yasuko Yokoshi (Dance); and Zina Camblin, Catharine Dill/Exploding Moment, and Alyse Rothman/Nerve (Text-Based Performance). Awardees receive 70 hours of free space and show their work during BAX's 2004 Space Grant Showcases in October or November. The program is funded in part by NYSCA.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced in early June the recipients of the 2004 National Heritage Fellowships, which honor folk and traditional arts. Each award is worth $20,000. Dana Gioia, the endowment's chairman, said, "The work of these awardees is a testament to the diversity and exceptional quality of America's artistic resources." The winners are Anjani Ambegaokar, North Indian Kathak dancer (Diamond Bar, CA); Charles T. Campbell, gospel steel-guitar player (Rochester, NY); Joe Derrane, Irish-American button accordionist (Randolph, MA); Jerry Douglas, dobro player (Nashville, TN); Gerald (Subiyay) Miller, Skokomish oral-tradition bearer, carver, and basket maker (Shelton, WA); Milan Opacich, tamburitza instrument maker (Shererville, IN); Eliseo and Paula Rodriguez, straw appliqué artists (Santa Fe, NM); Koko Taylor, blues musician (Country Club Hills, IL); Yuqin Wang and Zhengli Xu, Chinese rod puppeteers (Aloha, OR); and Chum Ngek, Cambodian musician and teacher (Gaithersburg, MD), who receives the Bess Lomax Hawes award for service to folk and traditional arts. (New York Times)

For the third year in a row Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire CEO who spent over $70 million of his own money to become NYC's 108th mayor, has given an eight-figure "anonymous" gift to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a nonprofit foundation, for the purpose of supporting arts and cultural groups in the city. This year, the gift amounts to $15 million, $5 million more than his pledges in both 2002 and 2003, bringing the total over his three years in office to $35 million. As in previous years, the gift is to be regranted to small and midsize cultural nonprofits. According to a press release, the extra $5 million, however, will go to support "small- and medium-size social services organizations that work in the city's boroughs and neighborhoods dealing with immigrants, families, youth, education, and health." In 2003, 162 arts groups benefited from Bloomberg's gift. This year, 198 cultural and arts groups and 104 social services organizations will receive grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 to aid with general operating expenses. (Back Stage)

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $7 million this year in 366 grants through its Challenge America: Access to the Arts program. The list includes 70 grants for New York, ranging from under $10,000 to over $90,000. The funding supports arts organizations' efforts to (1) provide opportunities for people to experience and participate in a wide range of art forms and activities, (2) expand and diversify their audiences, and 3) use the potential of the arts to help strengthen communities. Many of the projects extend the arts to underserved populations whose access is limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability. The larger performance grants include $25,000 to Big Apple Circus for its Beyond the Ring program, which teaches classical circus arts to inner-city youth; $30,000 to Dancing in the Streets for a series of dance programs in NYC's public parks, to be launched in Harlem, Red Hook, and Long Island City; and $55,000 to Spanish Theater Repertory Company for its program Accesso 2005: Hispanic Theater for Latino Students, which offers classic and contemporary Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. Latino plays to Hispanic studetns and communities throughout the Northeast. (Back Stage)

The Jerome Foundation recently awarded grants to six New York City performing arts organizations. Meet the Composer received $40,000 to help emerging composers from Minnesota and NYC. The organization supports creation, performance, and recording of music by American composers and the development of new audiences for their work. The public television channel Thirteen/WNET received $25,000 to support Reel New York, a program series which features independent media artists. Volcano Love received $24,000 to support new work by choreographer Sarah East Johnson and her company LAVA, an all-women group performing daring acrobatic dance. Theater company New Georges, founded to produce plays by women and with substantive roles for women, received $30,000 to develop new plays. SITI Company, responsible for last year's bobrauschenbergamerica at BAM, received $12,000 for its associates program; and P.S. 122 received $12,000 to support new work by independent artist Claude Wampler.

Created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill, who died in 1972, the foundation grants funds to support the creation and production of new artistic works by, and contributes to the professional advancement of, emerging artists resident in Minnesota and New York City. For more information about The Jerome Foundation and this year's grants, call 1(800) 995-3766 or visit the foundation's website at www.jeromefdn.org.

There were some surprises at this year's 58th annual Tony Awards, which honor excellence in Broadway theater, presented June 6 at NYC's Radio City Music Hall. Although the expected winner for best musical was Wicked, the revisionist fantasy musical about Oz, Avenue Q, the quirky, racy show about sexually active puppets scored a surprise upset, winning Tonys for best musical, book, original score, and leading actress. This last was also a surprise, as the best leading actress award was widely thought to be a race between Donna Murphy of Wonderful Town and Tonya Pinkins of Caroline, or Change. Instead the award went to Idina Menzel for her portrayal of Elphaba, the ambivalent, green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. A complete list of this year's Tony Awards follows.

Play: I Am My Own Wife (Doug Wright)
Musical: Avenue Q (Jeff Whitty Robert Lopez Jeff Marx)
Revival (Play): Henry IV (William Shakespeare)
Revival (Musical): Assassins (Stephen Sondheim John Weidman)
Actor (Play): Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife)
Actress (Play): Phylicia Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun)
Actor (Musical): Hugh Jackman (The Boy from Oz)
Actress (Musical): Idina Menzel (Wicked)
Featured Actor (Play): Brian F. O'Byrne (Frozen)
Featured Actress (Play): Audra McDonald (A Raisin in the Sun)
Featured Actor (Musical): Michael Cerveris (Assassins)
Featured Actress (Musical): Anika Noni Rose (Caroline, or Change)
Direction (Play): Jack O'Brien (Henry IV)
Direction (Musical): Joe Mantello (Assassins)
Choreography: Kathleen Marshall (Wonderful Town)
Book of a Musical: Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q)
Original Score: Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx (Avenue Q)
Orchestrations: Michael Starobin (Assassins)
Scenic Design: Eugene Lee (Wicked)
Costume Design: Susan Hilferty (Wicked) Lighting Design: Jules Fisher, Peggy Eisenhauer (Assassins)
Special Awards: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park (Regional Theater Award);
James M. Nederlander (Lifetime Achievement in the Theater)

A seemingly endless selection process is finally over. On June 10 the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced that the two cultural buildings rebuilt upon the World Trade Center site in downtown Manhattan will be occupied by four groups: the Joyce Theater, the Signature Theater Company, the Freedom Center, and the Drawing Center. As expected, New York City Opera's bid to become one of the site's cultural anchors has been rebuffed. The project will create a major arts complex comparable to Lincoln Center or the National Theater complex in London. Development officials aim to serve several different constituencies, from tourists seeking entertainment, to families of the 9/11 victims, to neighborhood residents looking for after-school art classes, to the city's culture fans. Questions remain about the financing of the project. The cultural buildings and the planned 9/11 memorial are projected to cost about $600 million, about half of which will be contributed by LMDC. The fundraising burden for the other half has not yet been allocated amongst the cultural groups, and several top financiers have turned down the position of heading a foundation charged with raising money for the project. It's also unclear whether the groups will be designated members of the Cultural Institutions Group (CIGs), the consortium of 34 arts organizations (BAM or Carnegie Hall, for example), either owned by the city or based on city land, that benefit from city support for their operational expenses. In the next phase, the federally financed LMDC will offer an undetermined amount in challenge grants to assist the four institutions in starting their fundraising efforts. One of the cultural buildings will be shared between the Joyce Theater, presenting modern dance in a 900- to 1000-seat theater, and the Signature Theater, presenting theater, music, and dance in three different sized theaters, the largest with 499 seats. The other building will house the Freedom and Drawing centers. The Freedom Center will be a museum in the tradition of Washington's Holocaust Museum and Philadelphia's National Constitution Center. The Drawing Center will replace its current space on Wooster Street with galleries for the exhibition of historical and contemporary drawings, and space for public and educational programs. (New York Times)

Professional fundraiser and arts management consultant Anne Denin was named executive director of Performance Space 122 in June. The East Village mainstay, which mainly showcases emerging performance artists, lost its 20-year artistic/executive director when Mark Russell resigned last winter. Russell made the performance space one of the most important showcases for new talent in New York City. Unusually for a nonprofit performing arts institution, Russell combined the posts of artistic and executive directors, but in the wake of his departure P.S. 122's board has decided to split the post into two positions and is seeking an artistic director. Denin said, "Fortunately for P.S. 122, Mark programmed all of the 2005 season-our 25th anniversary season-and quite frankly, he identified enough artists that we could probably go through 2008 if we wanted to." However, Denin aims to have the job filled by the fall. (Back Stage)

New Arts Building in Brooklyn Names Tenants The BAM Local Development Corporation, the agency leading the creation of a cultural district in downtown Brooklyn, announced in June the names of the first tenants of 80 Hanson Place (also called the James E. Davis Arts Building after the late murdered city councilman). The new tenants include Bang on a Can, BOMB magazine, Cool Culture, Creative Outlet Dance Theater, and Franklin Furnace. The $6 million project, to be completed later this summer, will restore an abandoned 8-story state office building for arts-related public use. When completed, it will house 20 nonprofit performing and visual arts groups at below-market rents. The area surrounding the Brooklyn Academy of Music seems to be thriving. Theater for a New Audience (TFANA), acclaimed for its innovative productions of Shakespeare and modern classics, announced this April that it will build a $22 million, 299-seat home there too. Other fairly new venues in the neighborhood include the Mark Morris Dance Studio, the BAM Harvey Theater, and 138 South Oxford Street, which is operated by the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York and provides office and rehearsal space for nearly two dozen small and midsize theater groups. (Back Stage)

Carla Maxwell, artistic director of the Limón Dance Company, has recently been presented with three awards. On April 26 Maxwell received the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for “outstanding achievement in restaging, revival, or reconstruction” for José Limón’s Psalme in the Limón Company’s 2002–2003 season at the Cowell Theater. On April 14, in a ceremony in Mexico City, Maxwell was presented with a gold medal and citation from Difocur (the cultural ministry of Mexico’s western states), the governor of Sinaloa (Limón’s birth state), and the Istituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (Mexico’s equivalent of the NEA) for her “great work in keeping alive the philosophical and artistic essence of the Mexican dancer and choreographer José Limón.” And finally, last September, in a ceremony in Medellín, Colombia, Maxwell received two medals, from the mayor of Medellín and from the governor of the state of Antioquia, for “keeping Limón’s vision and work alive.” (Back Stage)

The resignation of Nicolette B. Clarke, for the last eight years the executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts, was announced June 7 by the organization’s chairman, Richard J. Schwartz, who praised Clarke as a “terrific partner.” Clarke’s resignation will take effect August 4. She plans to become the director of development at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., where her son is a student. (New York Times)

The Obie Awards, which honor Off-Broadway theater, were announced in a ceremony on May 17 at Webster Hall in Manhattan. The awards have been presented by The Village Voice since 1956. Craig Lucas’s political drama Small Tragedy won the award for best American play of the season and an award for its ensemble of actors. Other actors receiving awards were Viola Davis (Intimate Apparel); Lisa Emery (Iron); Jayne Houdyshell (Well); Sarah Jones (Bridge & Tunnel); Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife); Zilah Mendoza (Living Out); Maude Mitchell (Mabou Mines Dollhouse); Brian F. O’Byrne (Frozen); Tonya Pinkins (Caroline, or Change); Lili Taylor (Aunt Dan and Lemon), and the acting company of Bug. Citations were awarded to several artists and companies, including SoHo Rep for Molly’s Dream, Martin Moran for The Tricky Part, Kyle Jarrow and Alex Timbers for A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant, and George C. Wolfe for his stewardship of the Public Theater. Mark Russell, the departing artistic director of P.S. 122, won a lifetime achievement award, and Theaters Responding to War (THAW) was one of three organizations to win a financial award. (New York Times, www.villagevoice.com)

The outspoken modern-dance pioneer Bella Lewitzky died July 16 in Pasadena, CA, aged 88, from a heart attack. Born in Llano del Rio, a utopian socialist community in the Mojave Desert, Lewitzky grew up in San Bernardino. In the 1930s she took classes with Lester Horton, then the Los Angeles area’s most prominent modern dancer; before long she had established herself as a compelling performer with the Horton Dance Group. She starred in highly dramatic Horton works such as Salome (1937) and The Beloved (1948). Another Horton dancer, Newell Reynolds, became Lewitzky’s husband in 1940. In 1950 Lewitzky left Horton’s group for an independent career. She struggled to make Los Angeles an important dance center and to promote the art form in California, and she campaigned passionately for government support of the arts. She developed a reputation as a dynamic teacher, holding posts at the University of Southern California, Idyllwild, and the California Institute for the Arts, and serving as a guest teacher around the world. In 1951, Lewitzky founded Dance Associates, a school and company; from 1966 to 1997 she directed the Bella Lewitzky Dance Company. Her dancers received health insurance and an annual salary, even when they did not perform every month of the year. A fiery performer herself, she favored a cooler choreographic style in such works as On the Brink of Time (1969), Kinaesonata (1970), and Greening (1976). Lewitzky served on the NEA’s dance panel and the California Arts Council, and she received the Dance Magazine Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Tiffany Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Capezio Award, and, in 1989, the first California Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement.

In 1951 Lewitzky was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and asked to identify Communist Party members in the arts world. She refused, saying, “I’m a dancer, not a singer.” Decades later, Lewitzky and her company struck an important blow for freedom of expression: The company sued the National Endowment for the Arts when it started requiring grant recipients to sign an anti-obscenity pledge. In 1991, a federal judge found the pledge unconstitutional. (New York Times, Back Stage)

updated on 8/16/04

Japanese soprano Yoko Watanabe, known for her portrayal of the tragic title character of Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, died July 15 in Milan, Italy, aged 51. She learned she had cancer in 2000. Born in Fukuoka, Japan, Watanabe studied Japanese dance, ballet, and piano before turning to singing. She studied first with the soprano Kuniko Kozono, then at the University of Japan in Tokyo, and then, through a second-place competition win in 1976, at the famed La Scala in Milan. The first-prize winner in that competition was Italian tenor Renato Grimaldi, whom she married.

Watanabe’s professional debut was as Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, in Treviso, Italy, in 1978. She made her La Scala debut in 1985 as Liù in Puccini’s Turandot, and in her 20-year career she sang other major Puccini heroines, as well as roles in works by Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, and Bizet. But her signature role was that of Cio-Cio San in Butterfly; it was her debut role with the Royal Opera in 1983, the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1986, and the Metropolitan Opera in 1987.

Part of her success came from the way she balanced western and Japanese acting styles. “I am Japanese, and my figure is Japanese,” she said, “but the music is Italian, so I try not to do too much of what we would think of as Japanese theatrical movement. In Japanese theater, our movements are very small. We walk in small steps, we make small gestures. I don’t believe those would really convey the character of Butterfly fully to the public. After all, this is a very dramatic opera.” (New York Times)

updated on 8/16/04