New York, NY - June 16, 2009 The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, announced today its 2009 grants underwriting 40 new projects spanning the field of performing arts practices. A panel of peers selected this year's grantees in four disciplines - Dance, Theater, Music Composition and Interdisciplinary Works - from more than 700 submissions, which represents the largest number of applications in the program's 20-year history.

The MAP Fund also announced its participation in a new initiative by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, to provide general operating support for 2009 MAP grantees in Theater, Dance, Interdisciplinary Works and Jazz, with the goal of providing greater stability to the arts sector during the global economic crisis. Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, said: "We are delighted to support this year's roster of grantees and the MAP Fund, which for years has identified and nurtured some of the nation's most vibrant and innovative work in the performing arts. We are especially pleased to be able to deepen our support for these organizations during difficult times by adding general operating funds to their project grants-a recognition of their importance in the arts community and our way of promoting their longer term financial health." The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has pledged an additional $400,000 to MAP grantees in support of the operating costs initiative.

Among this year's artists, an unprecedented 51 percent are first-time grantees, including Minneapolis choreographer Emily Johnson, for a work on her upbringing in the Yup 'ik Nation in Alaska; and Santa Fe-based composer Molly Sturges, for a contemporary opera to take place on an active city bus. These grantees represent artist communities and audiences in 16 cities across the United States, including Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco and Santa Fe. There is an international breadth to this class of grantees as well, with artists hailing from Cambodia, China, Burkina Faso, France, Iran, Korea and Ukraine.

"The Rockefeller Foundation is proud to mark the twentieth anniversary of its support for the MAP Fund and its pioneering work in the performing arts," said Associate Director in Foundation Initiatives Joan Shigekawa, "It has been a privilege and an honor to support the wonderful playwrights, choreographers, composers and directors whose talents, each year, create and expand our vision of American culture."

In addition to new grantees, a number of the 2009 recipients are established and mid-career artists who have previously been supported by the MAP Fund. Two examples are Dean Moss, who will create a new work with visual artist Sung Myung Chun; and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, for a multi-year project dealing with "performance, environmental racism, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate change era."

"This new class of grantees showcases the vibrant spectrum of contemporary performing artists," added Ruby Lerner, President of Creative Capital. "In the current economic climate, support for artists whose work enriches the cultural fabric of their communities is ever more critical. MAP's support helps bring the next generation of artists forward while also filling a gap in the funding needs of mid-career artists. We are deeply grateful for the continued commitment of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation to the program and its grantees."

About the MAP Fund The Multi-Arts Production Fund was created by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1989 to support innovation and cross-cultural exploration in theater, dance and music. Among the longest-lived programs in arts philanthropy, with the Rockefeller Foundation's support, MAP has disbursed over $18 million dollars to nearly 1,000 projects. In 2008, MAP became the recipient of a three-year, $3.3 million support grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Since 2001, the program has been administered by Creative Capital.

About Creative Capital Creative Capital launched in 1999 and reinvented arts philanthropy, integrating grants and career development services to support adventurous projects through long-term partnerships with artists. In its first decade, Creative Capital has advanced the careers of 411 grantees through $14 million in financial support and advisory services, and has reached more than 2,200 additional artists through its Professional Development Program in workshops across the country.

MAP Fund 2009 Grantees

American Repertory Theatre
Cambridge, MA
Prometheus Bound
Lead Artists: Diane Paulus, Steven Sater, Serj Tankian
A new music theatre piece written by writer and lyricist Steven Sater and staged by A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus, with music from System of A Down's Serj Tankian.

Appalshop
Whitesburg, KY
The People's Poet
Lead Artists: Frank X. Walker, Ian Inaba, Thousand Kites Ensemble
An online multi-media community and live spoken word performance inspired by the life and work of poet Etheridge Knight (1931-1991).

Big Art Group
New York, NY
The People - Philadelphia
Lead Artist: Caden Manson
A site-specific, multimedia public performance investigating the nature of public responsibility and contributions to evolving democratic dialogue.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn, NY
The Long Count
Lead Artists: Bryce Dessner, Aaron Dessner, Matthew Ritchie
An experimental music and song-cycle that includes animated film work, and innovative performance strategies, fusing elements of the Mayan creation stories of the Popol Vuh with American baseball mythology.

Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation/The Watermill Center
Brooklyn, NY
Hakamé: Footprints in the Sand
Lead Artist: Robert Wilson
A multi-media theatrical piece that will recount the true story of a fatal 19th century shipwreck off the coast of Bridgehampton, Long Island, and its impact on the history of the Shinnecock Indian Nation.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies /Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
Anthropomorphic
Lead Artist: Xavier Le Roy
A performance work by French choreographer Xavier Le Roy, which uses the language of contemporary dance to move between representations of humans, animals, and machines, suggesting new, hybrid creatures.

Circuit Network
San Francisco, CA
Baggage Allowance
Lead Artist: Pamela Z
A sonically and visually layered work that will explore the connections between people and the belongings (and memories) they cart around.

Circuit Network
San Francisco, CA
CAT LADY
Lead Artist: Kristina Wong, Michelle Tessier, Wes Kim
An interdisciplinary performance that bends the parallel worlds of two pathetically lonely personas living at the margins of gender and society - musty cat ladies and fast-talking pick-up artists.

Dance New Amsterdam
New York, NY
Art/Family/Our Lives
Lead Artists: Nora Chipaumire, Souleymane Badolo, Obo Addy
A dance, exhibit and happening about the love between two traveling artists who met far from their homes through the magnetism and magic of dance.

Dance Theater Workshop (Fiscal Sponsor)
New York, NY
PURO DESEO
Lead Artist: luciana achugar
An evening-length dance work examining the relationship between artistic process and art as commodified product.

DiverseWorks
Houston, TX
Bluefinger
Lead Artists: Jason Nodler, Charles Thompson (Black Francis), Anthony Barilla
A new musical play adapted from the album of the same name by legendary singer-songwriter Charles Thompson (a.k.a. Black Francis), based on the life, work and death of Dutch painter, rocker, and writer Herman Brood.

Electronic Music Foundation
New York, NY
Tracing
Lead Artists: Frances White, Monique Buzzarté
A musical composition for trombone and electronic sound by Frances White, to be performed by trombonist Monique Buzzarté.

Fractured Atlas (Fiscal Sponsor)
New York, NY
How To Build A Forest
Lead Artists: Katie Pearl, Lisa D'Amour
A work that combines duration, sculpture, and performance to construct and then de-construct a forest in front of a public audience over the course of ten hours.

Gametophyte
New York, NY
Nameless forest (tentative title)
Lead Artists: Dean Moss, Sung Myung Chun, Michael Kamber
A multimedia performance by Dean Moss, based on the work of, and in collaboration with Korean sculptor, Sungmyung Chun, with war zone video footage from photojournalist Mike Kamber.

Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall
New York, NY
Holding It Down: Songs of Experience
Lead Artists: Vijay Iyer, Mike Ladd
A new evening-length multi-layered performance, created in collaboration with young American war veterans of color, in which their testimonies are woven into a fabric of music, poetry, and song.

HERE Arts Center
New York, NY
Secret Rendezvous
Lead Artists: Ivana Cantanese, Kameron Steele
A black comedy developed in dance-theatre style through the collaboration of Brooklyn-based theatre company The South Wing and the Yokohama-based performance art collective Nibroll that follows the Kafkaesque struggle of one man's search for his wife.

HERE Arts Center
New York, NY
Sounding
Lead Artists: Kristin Marting, Jennifer Gibbs, Maya Ciarrocchi
A multi-media, ensemble theater piece, loosely inspired by Henrik Ibsen's "Lady From The Sea," that investigates and explodes our cultural attitudes toward grief.

Institute for Intercultural Studies
New York, NY
Richard III in the Ta'ziyeh style
Lead Artist: Mohammad Ghaffari
Shakespeare's Richard III in the Ta'ziyeh style of Iran, which employs horses, a circular stage, musicians, singing and swordplay.

Japan Society
New York, NY
The Manga Project
Lead Artist: Jeremy Wade
An interdisciplinary work fusing dance performance and live visual art/illustration, inspired by Japanese popular culture and subculture.

Jazzmobile
New York, NY
Music and Memory
Lead Artist: Wycliffe Gordon
A composition inspired by Within Our Gates, a film by Oscar Micheaux, the prolific early 20th Century African American filmmaker.

Khmer Arts Academy
Long Beach, CA
The Lives of Giants
Lead Artists: Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, Merrily Murray-Walsh
A dance work that explores the ways in which the transformation of movement and costuming can reveal the degeneration of an epic narrative and, symbolically, the failure of a society due to the perpetuation of violence.

Kitka
Oakland, CA
Singing Through Darkness: Songs of Wartime
Lead Artist: Mariana Sadovska
An evening-length vocal-theater work exploring the multi-faceted experiences of wartime as expressed through song.

LittleGlobe
Albuquerque, NM
ROUTE/RUTA
Lead Artists: Molly Sturges, Valerie Martinez, Acushla Bastible
An interactive, inter-media opera to be performed on city buses and created in collaboration with Santa Fe residents who live along and use the city bus routes.

Los Angeles Poverty Department
Los Angeles, CA
Walk The Talk
Lead Artist: John Malpede, Los Angeles Poverty Department
A peripatetic performance that celebrates the community of the poorest neighborhood in Los Angeles: Skid Row.

MAPP International Productions
New York, NY
red, black, and GREEN: a blues
Lead Artists: Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Theaster Gates, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi
Landing at the intersection of green economics and black psychology, this work mixes hip hop and contemporary theater to look at environmental racism, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate change era.

MAPP International Productions
New York, NY
Tyler Tyler
Lead Artist: Yasuko Yokoshi
A full-evening stage work, created in collaboration with Kabuki artist Masumi Seyama, which explores the essence of dance regardless of culture, technique and training.

New York Foundation for the Arts (Fiscal Sponsor)
New York, NY
City of Paper
Lead Artists: Yin Mei, Sang Jijia
A dance work that explores a Wayang-like shadow world in which ink, video, light, sound, paper and stage architecture converge in a post-modern meditation on history, fact and the mutability of human perception.

New York Theatre Workshop
New York, NY
Aftermath
Lead Artists: Erik Jensen, Jessica Blank
A play based on interviews with the real people behind the phrase "collateral damage" - civilian victims of the war in Iraq.

Next Theatre Company
Evanston, IL
War With the Newts
Lead Artists: Jason Loewith, Michael Montenegro
A stage adaptation of Karel Capek's 1936 story about globalization, xenophobia and isolationism, translating it into the 21st century.

Other Minds
San Francisco, CA
Untitled New Work
Lead Artists: Jason Moran, The Bandwagon
A composition from composer and pianist Jason Moran based on the record Dialect of the Black American.

Performa
New York, NY
Untitled Work in Progress
Lead Artist: Ryan Trecartin
A performance work by artist Ryan Trecartin who’s video practice both in form and in function advances understandings of post-millennial technology, narrative and identity, and also propels these matters as expressive mediums

Performance Zone, Inc./The Field (Fiscal Sponsor)
New York, NY
Narrative Ballet on the Subject of Martyrdom
Lead Artists: Sarah Michelson, Parker Lutz, Pete Drungle
Choreographer Sarah Michelson will create a narrative ballet based on a new play written by playwright Richard Maxwell.

Performance Zone, Inc./The Field (Fiscal Sponsor)
New York, NY
The Materiality of Impermanence
Lead Artist: Kimberly Bartosik
An evening-length choreographic project for two performers that examines a complex architectural structure - the home.

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)
Portland, OR
Reggie Watts: Fait Accompli
Lead Artists: Reggie Watts, Tommy Smith
Fusing elements of multimedia performance and rock concert, this performance work by comic artist Reggie Watts and writer Tommy Smith moves through various scenarios and spaces, interacting and playing inside of a virtual ensemble.

Present Music
Milwaukee, WI
Buffalo Nation (Bison, Bison)
Lead Artists: Jerome Kitzke, Kathleen Masterson, Present Music
A piece of theatrical music that illuminates the huge, varied, and largely unsung story of the American Bison from pre-history to present time.

Rude Mechanicals
Austin, TX
Cagney & Lacey in a Thousand Plateaus (CL1000P)
Lead Artist: Rude Mechanicals
A popular adaptation of the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze, which will use the concept of fan fiction to encourage the creation of new work by the community in several media.

Springboard for the Arts
Minneapolis, MN
The Thank-You Bar
Lead Artist: Emily Johnson
A performance centered on dance, storytelling, visual image, and music that explores the confluence of truth and myth as it relates to contemporary Native Alaskan experience.

Watts Village Theater Company
Los Angeles, CA
Meet Me @ the Metro
Lead Artists: Sigrid Gilmer, Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez
An interactive, inter-disciplinary theatrical journey for both accidental and traditional theatergoing audiences from around the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Young Jean Lee's Theater Company
New York, NY
King Lear
Lead Artist: Young Jean Lee
A loose, experimental adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, which explores Young Jean Lee's weird and complicated responses to patriarchal authority.

Youth Speaks/The Living Word Project
San Francisco, CA
Mirrors in Every Corner
Lead Artists: Chinaka Hodge, Ambrose Akinmusire, The Living Word Project
An evening-length musical-theater work that chronicles the life of an African-American family in Oakland, CA, as they grapple with issues of race and identity.

Emily Johnson


Ta'ziyeh Performance


Jeremy Wade


Khmer Arts Academy


LittleGLOBE


Rude Mechanicals


Serj Tankian


Mike Ladd and Vijay Iyer