One of the newly-awarded Creative Work Fund grants is going to the KITKA
Women's Vocal Ensemble of Oakland, CA. The $35,000 grant is to support
the creation of "The Rusalki Cycle," an opera weaving together traditional
Slavic folk songs with new music by Richard Einhorn. KITKA's nine
vocalists and an ensemble of Western classical and Eastern European folk
musicians will perform the opera.
Rusalki are powerful female figures in Slavic folklore, mermaids who
lure and destroy men in the streams and ponds where they rule. Dvorak and
Dargomizhski had treated the topic in operas named after the sirens. The
Bay Area collaborators plan to transform the legends into a "non-narrative,
contemporary performance."
Creative Work Fund awards, which total $504,700 this year, are granted
by an organization established by the Columbia Foundation, the Evelyn and
Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, and the Miriam and Peter Haas Fund. The Fund will
operate two more years, offering $500,000 for arts support next year. For
information about applications, see
http://www.creativeworkfund.org/howto.htm.
Other awards went to composer-musician Johari Jabir, who will collaborate
with Theatre Rhinoceros on a new musical theater piece exploring hair and
the role it plays in identity construction - particularly within the Gay
and African American communities. The piece will incorporate a musical
score by Jabir, and narrative based on oral histories and interviews,
co-written by Jabir and Theater Rhinoceros's co-artistic directors Doug
Holsclaw and John Fisher. Hairstory will premiere in fall 2002.
Composer-musician Wayne Wallace, choreographers Laura Elaine Ellis, Aisha
Jenkins, Robert Henry Johnson, and Robert Moses are collaborating with the
presenting organization ODC/Theater to create a new work based on the Faith
Ringgold quilt, "They Came to America." The work will have three main dance
sections, interwoven by music, text, and a movement-based narrative, all
accompanied by Wallace's 10-piece orchestra.
Janos Gereben/SF
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