HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Office for the Arts Awards Grants for Student Projects

Harvard Book Review, Evening at Versailles, and Dream Cake to be funded

Jointly sponsored by Radcliffe and Harvard, the Office for the Arts (OFA) supports direct student involvement in the arts as a means to integrate creative thinking and expression into the undergraduate educational experience.

Students are embarking on a wide array of innovative artistic projects, funded by the OFA, to be presented this spring. The Harvard Council on the Arts awarded 39 spring '99 grants, totaling $12,000, to support innovative undergraduate arts projects. The Council funded 83 percent of all applications received. The OFA Council members are: Robert J. Kiely (chair), S. Allen Counter, Thomas Kelly, Arthur L. Loeb, Claire Mallardi, Myra Mayman, Jeff W. Nichols, and Marcus Stern. Some of these grants are provided from named endowment funds at the OFA; others are named in honor of the OFA's annual donors.

The OFA will also offer grants for projects to take place during ARTS FIRST, May 6-9, 1999. The deadline for ARTS FIRST grant applications is Wednesday, Feb. 3, 1999. The deadline for OFA grant applications for projects occurring in the fall semester of 1999 is Thursday, April 22, 1999. For more information, call the OFA, 495-8676.

Spring 1999 Grants

Dance

CityStep, Joanna Holzman '00, $350 for the CityStep show. This show is the culmination of a yearlong program that combines public service with the performing arts in a collaboration between the Cambridge Community and Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduates.

Crimson Dance Team, Margarita Miranda '01, $200 for the Crimson Dance Team show. The show combines a variety of dance styles ranging from funk and hip-hop to jazz and lyrical to create exciting and dynamic dance routines.

Harvard-Radcliffe Caribbean Club Dance Troupe, Danielle Romain '00, $200 for general operating expenses for this group, which is entering its second year. The dance troupe has become an integral part of the Caribbean Club, giving students the opportunity to learn and practice Caribbean and African-American forms of dance.

Expressions Dance Company, Manuela Arciniegas '01, $350 for Lush Life, the spring semester dance show that showcases 12 to 15 student-choreographed pieces. The 30-member group uses hip-hop, jazz, modern and reggae dance to express emotions, concepts, and settings.

Sixiang Flutter Fan Dance, Asian American Dance Troupe, Jessica Leung '00, $200. The Sixiang flutter fan dance will be a student-choreographed double flutter fan dance which incorporates elements of not only traditional Chinese dance, but also ballet, jazz, lyrical dance, and gymnastics.

Mainly Jazz Dance Company, Clara Brillembourg '01, $350 for the Mainly Jazz Spring 1999 Concert. The Concert will feature undergraduate and graduate jazz dancers, with the majority of the pieces choreographed by students.

Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company, Rachel Farbiarz '99, $350 for the ninth annual spring concert of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company, which will consist of student choreography and parts of a piece commissioned from the instructor and performed by student dancers.

Literature

Harvard Book Review, Lauren Jobe '00, $200 for this quarterly magazine. Aimed at bringing newly released books to the attention of the college community, the Review will consist of 15 long reviews and 15 short reviews on books ranging from poetry and fiction to history, accompanied by original drawings and photographs.

Harvard Tampoon, Caroline Turcotte '99, $100 for this humor magazine that presents literature, illustrations, and graphics.

The Gamut, Michelle Ree '00, $250 for this biannual magazine that aims to present a visual, open forum for all forms, lengths, and styles of poetry. It will be a 40-page issue of poetry solicited from the Harvard community.

Reading of the Mahabharata, Nathan Hill '02, $100 for presenting the Mahabharata, the longest poem in the world and one of the two most influential classics of Sanskrit literature. It contains the Bhagavad Gita, which adumbrates the tenets of Hinduism. Over a three-day weekend, the entire poem will be read in translation without interruption (estimated 62 hours).

Multidisciplinary

Dance with Pops, Harvard Pops Orchestra, Thomas Lue '01, $350 forDance with Pops, in which the Harvard Pops Orchestra will explore music associated with dance and collaborate with dancers from the Harvard-Radcliffe Ballet Company. The program will feature collaborative orchestra/ballet performances of George Gershwin's An American in Paris and Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances.

Dance with Pops, Harvard-Radcliffe Ballet Company, Elizabeth Darst '00, $350 for Dance with Pops, the Harvard-Radcliffe Ballet Company and the Harvard Pops Orchestra collaboration to produce student choreography with orchestral accompaniment to Gershwin's An American in Paris and Bernstein's Symphonic Dances.

Evening at Versailles, April James, GSAS, $350 for a series of workshops on Baroque Dance that will culminate in a performance of dance, music, and poetry in April 1999.

Harvard-Radcliffe Television, Jonathan Vatner '01, $200 for two new shows. The Society is their first situation comedy, about a handful of Harvard students, rejected from all other organizations, who form their own exclusionary club. The second is a debate forum called Sounding Off, which selects the most opinionated Harvard students to debate current issues.

Icon Magazine, Parul Singh '00, $350 for a new on-line undergraduate magazine. Icon aims to bring interactivity to the power of storytelling, using sound, video clips, graphics, photography, moving text, and links.

Mosaic, Diversity and Distinction, Ethan Thurow '99, $300 for the expansion of its arts section, Mosaic, which features original visual and literary art works. This section generally focuses on themes of ethnicity, race, and gender.

Music

Acis and Galatea, Harvard Early Music Society, Wesley Chinn '99, $800. This spring, the Harvard Early Music Society, along with the Onion Weavers puppet company, plans to present Handel's Acis and Galatea, using puppets for the action and music by the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra.

Candide, Dunster House Opera Society, Joseph Gfaller '01, $600 for a production this February of the 1992 Scottish National Opera version of Leonard Bernstein's Candide.

"Central Park West" for the HUJass Band, Andrew Kerns '01, $100 for the arrangement of "Central Park West" a jazz standard written by John Coltrane, for the Harvard Jazz Band's spring performance in Sanders Theater.

A Holst Celebration, Next Project Players, Phoebe Search '00, $300 for performing several works by Gustav Holst.

New Ways of Exploring Sound and Music, Project4NewMusic, Fleur de Vie Weinstock '99, $300 for a series of compositional and performance experiments in acoustics and socially conscious music. Included will be concerts at Busch Hall and the Carpenter Center, a free compilation tape, and unannounced outdoor and indoor performances.

Sacred and Secular Love in Renaissance Music, Immadrigali, Sidney Kwiram '99, $350 for an evening of poetry and music of the Renaissance where distinctions between the sacred and secular dissolve. The poetry will range from the Song of Songs to the secular poetry of medieval passion-love. At the center of the evening will be the vocal quartet Immadrigali.

Theater

A New Brain, David Levy '00, $300 for the Boston premiere of a new theater work by composer/lyricist William Finn. The show explores issues of art and mortality as a composer faces a potentially fatal, or at least a talent-altering, brain tumor.

Dario Fo' Drama Production, Italian Cultural Society, Marianna Fassinotti '01, $250 for the production of Non Tutti I Ladri Vengono Per Nuocere.

Dear Husband, Adams Chinese Theater Series, Elliot Marks, '99, $600 for two projects for the spring 1999 season. The first will be an English language production of Dear Husband, by Ding Xilin, translated by John B. Weinsten and Carsey Yee. The second project will be two plays by Chen Baichen performed in the original Mandarin with English subtitles.

An Evening at the Scripted Improv, Immediate Gratification Players, Justin Krebs '00, $350 for the production of four one-hour original sketch comedy shows early in the spring semester. The shows will consist of 8 to 10 comedy skits written by Harvard undergraduates.

Freshman Musical, Kyle Gilman '02, $400 for an original musical theater production written, composed, produced, directed, choreographed, and performed entirely by freshmen at Harvard and Radcliffe.

Guys & Dolls, Colleen McGuinness '99, $350 for the production of Guys and Dolls in the Hasty Pudding Theater.

Staged Reading Series, Harvard-Radcliffe Playwrights Society, Barbara Matteau, ALM Candidate, $200 for several readings of original plays and poetry stemming from the Harvard community.

Traditional Cultural Arts

1999 Korean Association Culture Show, Korean Association, Yoon-Ho Lee '99-00, $350 for the annual spring culture show.

Chinese Arts and Crafts Workshop, Albert Hui '01, $350 for a workshop that will expose undergraduates to three traditional arts of Chinese culture: painting, calligraphy and knotting.

Ghungroo, South Asian Association, Amit Doshi '00, $350 for this annual cultural performance that includes classical and modern dance, singing, music, and skits.

P'oongmul-pae, Korean Association, Walter Kim '00, $200 for the performance of p'oongmul, an art form that combines song, percussion, and dance. The members of the drum troupe play four instruments that represent the elements of the universe.

South Asian Dance Lessons, South Asian Association, Amit Doshi '00, $250 for dance lessons in Kathak - a classical South Asian dance known for its grace and aesthetic qualities.

Visual Arts

Adams House Figure Drawing Classes, Brian Shillinglaw '01, $200 for another season of figure drawing classes at Adams House.

Dream Cake, Brian Shillinglaw '01, $250 to build a 5-foot-diameter surreal dream cake out of cast colored rubber.

Floating Sculpture, Amanda Davis '01, $250 to construct a "floating sculpture" made of nylon nets over bent metal armature, suspended by stainless steel cable above Randolph Courtyard in Adams House.

Harvard Photography Journal, Seth Familian '01, $350 for the production of this annual publication produced by Harvard students showcasing photographic talent at Harvard. Along with student photography, each issue of HPJ highlights two pro