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DANCE NEWS: Kaatsbaan Cultural Park to Receive $15,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is pleased to announce it has been approved by National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $15,000. This grant will support We, a piece by Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon combining postmodern dance and Cambodian classical dance to reflect on themes of animism, ecology, and astronomy — and how these themes are embedded within geographically specific cultures and ecosystems.
We embodies humanity’s ongoing struggle to fully fathom our natural world, and will be part of Kaatsbaan’s Spring Festival. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as We with Kaatsbaan Cultural Park strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”
Coates and Phuon spent years dancing together in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s and Yvonne Rainer’s companies; a shared research fellowship at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts reunited the two artists and became the impetus for this new work.
The performance is separately crafted and interlinked: each artist has crafted an indoor section for the theatrical stage, and an outdoor section in selected landscapes, where the natural landscape is a character in the work as much as the human performers. Together, these combine to form two separate evening-length pieces.
For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news
