Field Dance Fund 2012 Announced!

The Field awards $42,000 to three New York City choreographers to build their capacity for creating bold new artworks with adaptive practices!

The ladder to success is broken for most mid-career dance artists; and younger artists question why to even get on the ladder in the first place! The Field Dance Fund (FDF) aims to transform artists’ practices so that they can move from a “triage” paradigm (in which many artists work), to a more honed, outcome-driven paradigm. Overall, the FDF artists will learn to combat creative burn-out by implementing more dexterous practices to move their careers and art-making forward.

Unlike any other program in New York, and with generous support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Mertz Gilmore Foundation, FDF offers six months of individualized consulting services (valued at $4,000 per artist), critical peer support and a cash award ($10,000 each).

Who are the lucky recipients? In January 2012 (the auspicious year of the Water Dragon), The Field selected the following three FDF grantees (from more than 70 applicants) via a rigorous peer adjudication process:

• luciana achugar makes work that “celebrates being in the experience of the body in its entire sensual splendor.” A Uruguayan choreographer based in Brooklyn, she received a Bessie award for her work, PURO DESEO, in 2010, and was on Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” list in January of 2011.

• Rachel Cohen’s work “encompasses excavation, research, movement and sculpture.” She often works with inanimate materials such as clay, flour, taffy, gum, wood and paper. Her company Racoco/Rx received a NYFA BUILD Stability grant in 2010 and is currently a company-in-residence at CAVE in Brooklyn.

• Michelle Dorrance seeks to “address the class wars in dance by helping audiences to view tap dance in a new and dynamically compelling context.” After performing with the Off-Broadway production STOMP for four years, she is now focusing on her own choreographic process. Michelle is a 2011 Bessie recipient for Outstanding Production.

The launch of the 2012 Field Dance Fund is only a single manifestation of The Field’s core values in action. We are thrilled about this new adventure and we can’t wait to work with the FDF artists to help them actualize their ambitions!