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Announcing the 2023 Creation Fund Awards

September 7, 2023  •  12 minute read

Photo credit: Titus Ogilvie Laing/Works & Process at the Guggenheim.

The National Performance Network (NPN) is awarding an initial $341,500 and leveraging an additional $1.5 million to support the creation of 19 new artistic works. The 2023 Creation Fund awardees include a variety of artists spread across sixteen cities featuring theatrical performances, spoken word, experimental sound, variety shows, video installations, and more.

These projects represent innovative and transformative arts experiences that explore and challenge aspects of identity, history, culture, and social justice. They blend multiple disciplines like music, dance, theater, puppetry, and spoken word, breaking conventional boundaries. The artists draw inspiration from historical and cultural contexts, often using site-specific locations for immersive experiences. 

The works range from an examination of humans as earth and Black humans as having a long, continuing terrestrial history that far precedes—and will outlive—the past five centuries of white supremacy’s specific oppressions to a highly immersive theatrical experience about a queer closeted stuntman’s journey to discover himself in a world of faux masculinity, unmasking the importance and danger of being true to oneself. 

The Creation Fund comprises the first phase of a comprehensive three-part program that champions new artistic endeavors, promotes racial and cultural justice, and facilitates vibrant live interactions between artists and communities. This fund specifically targets early-stage projects, which emphasize establishing strong connections among artists, presenters, and communities as they embark on their creative journeys. Each project will also receive additional support through the National Performance Networks’ Development Fund.

Learn more about the Creation & Development Fund here.

The Creation and Development Fund is made possible with support from the Doris Duke Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), and co-commissioners.

2023 Creation Fund Recipients

Alyah Baker / AB Contemporary Dance

Raleigh, NC

https://www.alyahbaker.com/dance

Quare Dance and Other Stories

Co-commissioners:

Black in Space (Washington, DC)

Hayti Heritage Center (Durham, NC)

Oakland Black Pride (Oakland, CA)

AB Contemporary Dance’s Quare Dance and Other Stories is an evening-length performance work that deconstructs and reimagines the classicism of ballet through the lens of Black queer identity. The multidisciplinary work combines movement, text, video, and adornment to challenge assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality and explore what becomes possible when we expand our understanding of what ballet is and can be. Weaving together a series of solos, duets, and ensemble dances, Quare Dance moves through themes of assimilation, self-realization, and self-reclamation to destabilize dominant narratives on Black, queer embodiment and enact a new paradigm rooted in radical joy and possibility.

Four brown-skinned dancers of varying builds, dressed in close-fitting brown tank tops, brown flowing pants, and flesh-tone ballet shoes, are spread out across a dark stage, captured in mid-motion. The dancers make varying shapes with their bodies, raising their arms above their heads, rising on the balls of their feet, and reaching with their legs.
AB Contemporary Dance at Queering Dance Festival in Berkeley, CA. left to right: Lee Edwards, Alexandria Johnson, William B. Fowler, Jr., and Kiara Felder (2023). Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Ananya Dance Theatre

Minneapolis, MN

https://www.ananyadancetheatre.org/

ANTARANGA: BETWEEN YOU AND ME

Co-commissioners:

Dance Place (Washington, DC)

John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI)

Links Hall (Chicago, IL)

The Yard (Chilmark, MA)

Ananya Dance Theatre’s ANTARANGA: BETWEEN YOU AND ME, an original full-length work, is inspired by the Sufi concept of Humsafar: “fellow traveler” or “those who journey together” and by a central tenet of Baul culture: moner mānush, “cherished person.” This project highlights the intimacy of traveling together, invigorating solidarities with complex understandings of history and memory. Their community-embedded creation process challenges fundamentalist/supremacist politics as they uplift the concept of love with site-specific public workshops, shared food-making traditions, and community dialogues.

Against a lit, blue background, five femmes in shredded, white costumes stand with open arms, surrounding one woman who kneels in a backbend. A non-binary artist in green wearing a crown of golden twigs paints the kneeling woman’s forehead. To the right, one woman kneels, facing the rest, with arms rounded, her sternum opening to the group. Another woman leans over her and reaches toward the group. All the artists are of various medium-to-dark brown skin tones.
Photo: Canaan Mattson. Ananya Dance Theatre performing NÜN GHERĀO in its premiere at the O’Shaughnessy at Saint Catherine University, Saint Paul, MN, September 30th, 2022. Dancers (R-L): Ananya Chatterjea, Noelle Awadallah, Alexandra Eady, Spirit Paris McIntyre, Lizzette Chapa, Parisha Rajbhandari, Alexis Araminta Reneé, Kealoha Ferreira, Laichee Yang.

Aretha Aoki and Ryan MacDonald

Topsham, ME

https://arethaaoki.com/

IzumonookunI

Co-commissioners:

Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME)

The Chocolate Factory Theater (Queens, NY)

Powell Street Festival Society (Vancouver, BC, Canada)

IzumonookunI is a multidisciplinary dance inspired by Izumo no Okuni, the 17th-century cis-female founder of the Japanese dance-drama form, kabuki—a form that currently contains little trace of its cis-female-centric, grassroots, counter-cultural origins. Choreographer Aretha Aoki and Bessie-nominated sound designer and artist Ryan MacDonald are resurrecting and reimagining Okuni as a punk/synth-wave/glam-goth figure. IzumokookunI aims to reclaim the origins of kabuki, collapse reductive binaries, and allow audiences to make new connections between seemingly disparate forms.

A dark-haired, medium-skinned woman wearing a red jumpsuit and a full-length sequined robe is downstage, holding a mic, her head thrown back, with the mic stand next to her. In the back of the stage, a little girl with blonde hair swings on a blue cloth swing, and a person with a tree branch face and glowing eyes operates a synthesizer and sound machinery. Disco balls hang from the ceiling. Smoke covers the performers' feet. A projection of light beams and lasers takes up the entire back wall of white geometric shapes.
Aretha Aoki, Ryan MacDonald, and Frankie MacDonald performing IzumonookunI at Bowdoin College. Image by Colin Kelley.

BRKFST Dance Company

Saint Paul, MN

https://brkfstdance.com/

STORMCLUTTER

Co-commissioners:

Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME)

John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI)

The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (Akron, OH)

The BRKFST Dance Company will create an evening-length production consisting of two parts: a remounting or reimagining of Dancers, Dreamers, and Presidents by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain for the proscenium stage and a new work titled STORMCLUTTER, with an original score by BRKFST member Renée Copeland, which explores the process of transitional periods in life.

A female dancer faces stage left, looking up with arms extended, and stands on the back of a male dancer, bent at the waist with hands on the floor, head facing the audience. Another female dancer holds the first dancer’s left leg while another dancer kneels and holds her right leg. The first dancer is supported by two standing male dancers, and one is supported on both sides by two female dancers.
Lisa Berman, Joseph Tran, Renée Copeland, Marie Thayer, Azaria Evans-Parham, Dani Banovetz, and Michael Romero performing Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge Op. 133 with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (2022). Photo: Courtney Perry.

CARPA San Diego

San Diego, CA

https://www.facebook.com/CARPASanDiego/about

La Carpa De La Frontera

Co-commissioners:

Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (San Antonio, TX)

Su Teatro Cultural & Performing Arts Center (Denver, CO)

CARPA San Diego presents La Carpa De La Frontera,  a site-specific touring show in the tradition of the Mexican carpa (tent), an irreverent and satirical vaudeville-esque variety show commonplace in Mexico and the US Southwest in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Their work illuminates human, labor, disability, and immigration rights issues on the US-Mexico border and draws on the troupe’s culturally specific arsenal of humor, satire, and savvy critique to promote post-pandemic healing. The troupe exposes communities to the arts through presentation and education, inviting them to participate as creative individuals in performances, workshops, and dialogues, expanding their knowledge of artistic culture.

This image features an outdoor space with two pillars in the background and seven people standing in front. Hanging to the left is a blue tarp, and to the right are colorful decorations. In the back row from the left is a young light-skinned woman with dark hair, a brown-skinned woman with dark hair, a light-skinned man with sunglasses and a red hat waving both hands, a light-skinned woman with sunglasses and blondish dark hair, a light-skinned male with dark fluffy hair. In front from the left is a woman dressed as an older lady and a brown-light-skinned man on a mobile scooter.
Back left, Zayra Nicifore, Olivia Ramos, Memo Mendez, Vanessa Lopez, Paul Araujo. Front left, Catalina Tapia, Samuel Valdez. ARTS IN THE PARK in Chula Vista, CA (2022). Photo: Joaquin Garay III.

Dora Arreola

Tampa, FL

https://www.usf.edu/arts/theatre-and-dance/about-us/contact-us/dora-arreola.aspx

Queering the Border: Que El Amor Nos Haga

Co-commissioners:

Art2Action Inc. (Tampa, FL)

Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (Houston, TX)

Queering the Border: Que El Amor Nos Haga (Love Makes Us) is a new movement theatre work created and directed by Dora Arreola, Artistic Director of Mujeres en Ritual Danza-Teatro, in collaboration with artists and communities living at the intersection of LGBTQ+ identity and the U.S.-Mexico border. This project focuses on stories of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community as it exposes the complexity of the situation for migrants, who have been the target of sensationalism and used by political interests in the U.S. and globally.

A queer, androgynous, medium-skinned Mexican woman with a shaved head, dressed in a tattered, red, sleeveless, sack-like garment, jumps straight up on one leg while staring intensely into the camera in a vacant dark gray space. A shadow of this figure can be seen on the gray flooring.
Dora Arreola, Queering the Border: Que El Amor Nos Haga, photo by Israel Josafat (Tijuana, Mexico, 2019).

Julia Barbosa Landois

Houston, TX

https://julialandois.com/

Praise Music Sonogram

Co-commissioners:

DiverseWorks (Houston, TX)

The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts (El Paso, TX)

Praise Music Sonogram combines spoken word, multi-channel video, and experimental sound to tell a story of motherhood, miscarriage, and abortion access across national and state borders. Contrasting an unexpected experience in a European haven for healthcare seekers with the medical scarcity and recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in the U.S., Barbosa Landois delivers a deeply personal and unexpectedly comedic narrative.

A light-skinned Latina woman with long brown hair tied in a ponytail and wearing a black dress holds a red iPhone towards the audience as she sings. The image of the audience that the iPhone is recording is projected behind her. Many of the audience members are wearing masks. Other audience members are visible sitting below the projected video.
Julia Barbosa Landois, Visage, 2021, performance commissioned by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston as part of “A Time for Action.” Photo: Karen Martinez.

LEIMAY

Brooklyn, NY

http://beta.leimay.org/

A MEAL

Co-commissioners:

7 Stages (Atlanta, GA)

Home for Contemporary Theatre and Art LTD (New York, NY)

A MEAL is an interdisciplinary reflection on our engagement with food—where it comes from, what we are eating, and who we share meals with. LEIMAY’s project elevates issues of food justice, labor rights, and the impact of climate change on farming through sound and video installations, live performances, and a group meal. Rooted in visual art, dance, and theatre, A MEAL becomes a vehicle to share the politics and culture around growing food, its distribution, and consumption. From abstract beings to seashell creatures and food nymphs, this collection of video portraits gives a poetic look into the process of a Meal.

A medium-skinned masked man stands opposite a light-skinned masked woman with a table between them with food preparation materials. Both wear aprons and wear face paint. The man holds up one end of a large green banana leaf, and the woman holds the other. It stretches across the table.
Leimay’s A MEAL at HERE, New York, NY, work-in-progress (2022). Photo by Hunter Canning.

Makini

Durham, NC

https://makinimakes.com/project/terrestrial/

TERRESTRIAL

Co-commissioners:

Dance Place (Washington, DC)

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL)

New York Live Arts (New York, NY)

TERRESTRIAL is a series of multimedia performance installations that unfold in various outdoor and indoor spaces. Inspired by the hot brown granules in both desert dirt and beach sand, TERRESTRIAL is an examination of humans as earth and Black humans as having a long, continuing terrestrial history that far precedes—and will outlive—the past five centuries of white supremacy’s specific oppressions. This project features a combination of vocal composition and choreography that magnifies and investigates social hierarchy and themes of nobility as they relate to the creation of civility and culture and humans as both earth and artifacts, building a speculative time capsule of what black life was like in the current moment of creation.

Three androgynous dancers are sprawled on the floor of a blue-lit room whose floor is covered by crumpled sheets with circles of sand appearing here and there and lit by golden lights. The room is long, with covered windows along the left side wall and back wall.
Photo (c) Scott Shaw at Gibney, NYC (2018). Conceived and designed by jumatutu m. poe (now known as Makini). Performed by jumatatu m. poe, Rodrigo Jerônimo, Samantha Speis. Video captured by Tayarisha Poe. Lighting designed by Asami Morita. Producing and tour management by Marýa Wethers.

Miguel Gutierrez

Brooklyn, NY

https://www.miguelgutierrez.org/

Currently untitled

Co-commissioners:

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL)

New York Live Arts (New York, NY)

On the Boards (Seattle, WA)

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (Los Angeles, CA)

Miguel Guiterrez’s project engages performers from New York and Los Angeles as they examine questions of archive, memory, and how context moves us into relation with ourselves and each other. Their work questions how the present reshapes the view of the past and how the past tells us about how bodies constantly change. By toggling the lens of attention between the past and the present, this research project into performance is a marker and an examination of the challenges in coming together.

Miguel Gutierrez, a light brown Latino man, leans against a dappled yellow wall. He has short dark hair and a short grey beard. His head is slightly tilted, and he is smiling. Miguel is wearing a silver chain necklace and a pink shirt with electric yellow jellyfish printed on it. On his arm is a Taurean bull tattoo.
Pictured: Miguel Gutierrez, Choreographer. Credit: Chloe Cusimano (2023).

Music From The Sole

New York, NY

http://www.musicfromthesole.com/

Currently untitled

Co-commissioners:

Dance Place (Washington, DC)

Guild Hall of East Hampton (East Hampton, NY)

Jacob’s Pillow (Becket, MA)

The Joyce Theater Foundation (New York, NY)

Works & Process, Inc (New York, NY)

The Yard (Chilmark, MA)

Music From The Sole will develop an evening-length work of tap, Afro-Brazilian and house dance, and original live music. This new piece will dig deeper into their practice of creating and presenting tap dance as both movement and music, with choreographic and compositional processes inseparable, embracing dancers’ roles as active creators of the music they move to. The narrative will expand their work celebrating tap’s Afro-diasporic roots and its lineage to forms encompassing jazz, funk, soul, house, samba, and hip hop while exploring themes central to the Black, immigrant, queer/LGBTQ2IA+ identities that make up our company of dancer-musicians.

A female dancer with braided hair and wearing a floral-print dress is mid-step, ready to clap her hands and stomp her left foot, smiling as she takes a tap solo in front of a multiracial company of dancers and musicians. All are dressed in colorful clothes, in vibrant orange lighting with a pink triangle and yellow circle in the background, evoking a festive, carnival-like atmosphere.
Titus Ogilvie Laing/Works & Process at the Guggenheim.

Nejla Yatkin Dance

Chicago, IL

https://www.ny2dance.com/

A Dance Without A Name – Ouroboros

Co-commissioners:

Art2Action Inc. (Tampa, FL)

The Dance Complex (Maple Grove, MN)

Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (Houston, TX)

A Dance Without A Name – Ouroboros is an interactive, evening-length theatrical solo dance presented in the round that resurrects and centers the ancient healing symbol of Ouroboros. The piece communicates through personal storytelling, contemporary and Middle Eastern dance, cabaret-style song, live finger cymbal/zill play through English, German, Turkish, and ASL, and audience participation. A Dance Without A Name – Ouroboros takes the audience on a journey of memory, place, current paradoxes, the cyclical and entrapping nature of time and culture, the lost history and continued relevance of embodying nature in the form of the snake dance, embodied feminine wisdom of the past and present, and about society’s relationship to dance and language.

A woman with a blue headpiece stands in a room full of people, with jewels stretched out on the floor and gathering rose petals. The lighting is a mix of orange and pink, and the audience members in the background are wearing protective masks.
Performer Nejla Yatkin in rehearsal at Links hall, Photo credit Enki Andrews.

Princess Lockerooo with Harold O’Neal and the Fabulous Waack Dancers

Brooklyn, NY

https://www.princesslockerooo.com/

The Fabulous Waack Dancers’ Big Show

Co-commissioners:

ArtPower at UC San Diego (La Jolla, CA)

Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (Los Angeles, CA)

Works & Process, Inc (New York, NY)

The Fabulous Waack Dancers’ Big Show celebrates the power and beauty of the iconic dance style known as Waacking. Filled with high-energy performances, dazzling costumes, and theatrical choreography, this new musical experience honors the roots and influences of Waacking by combining the glitz and glamour of Hollywood films, the vibrant energy of disco, and the colorful underground gay club culture of the ‘70s.

A tan-skinned, multi-racial woman with dark hair and hazel eyes is shown from the shoulders up. She has tight curls pulled up high on her head with bangs and is wearing a black strapless top with rhinestones lining her neck area. She has a silver, sequined choker that drips several strips of silver beads down past her top. She wears a dangling disco ball earring in one ear, and the other ear is lined with silver rhinestones that drip down into a single strand from the ear lobe.
in photo: Princess Lockerooo. Photographer: Kate Singh.

Raven Chacon & Guillermo Galindo

Red Hook, NY

http://spiderwebsinthesky.com/

Caesura

Co-commissioners:

516 Arts (Albuquerque, NM)

Ogden Contemporary Arts (Ogden, UT)

RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver, CO)

Performed live by Raven Chacon, Guillermo Galindo, and a number of percussionists, Caesura will examine the sonic history of the railway. Inspired by historically significant train routes in the US and designed in response to its environment, potential performance sites include train stations and moving trains, abandoned rail yards, and train cars. Instruments and sound devices used will include found materials from train sites and historical routes, including train hardware.

A performer wearing a reflective bodysuit moves a bow across a horizontally positioned cello while a second performer wearing a costume consisting of a camouflaged bodysuit with a black feather cape and silver face paint with a black line through the eyes plucks at the same cello. A large crowd looks on in the background.
The Living Earth Show Duo: Travis Andrews (on the left) and Andy Meyerson (on the right) performing Raven Chacon’s Tremble Staves at Sutro Baths. Photo credit: Roger Jones.

Rosy Simas Danse

Minneapolis, MN

https://www.rosysimas.com/

O’nigöëiyosde: (mind of peace)

Co-commissioners:

Jacob’s Pillow (Becket, MA)

Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN)

O’nigöëiyosde (mind of peace) is an ever-evolving project that returns to Haudenosaunee stories, ideas, and actions as a way to find peace and create resting space. This project springs from Simas’ creation of spaces for the community to heal, rest, generate, and regenerate and collaborations with Native/BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ artists to create experiences that bring the community together. O’nigöëiyosde is a project of environments and actions between artists and the community. It is a series of installations in the community, performances, actions of peace, discussions, and writings on peace.

The photo features Lela Pierce, a Black and multiracial woman with brown skin and curly shoulder-length black hair. She drapes a pale, thin deerskin lace under her closed eyes and across the bridge of her nose. She reaches for an open hand with yellow fingernails across her to support the deerskin as it travels past her inclined head. Others move around her.
Image of Lela Pierce by Valerie Oliveiro.

Rogue Artists Ensemble

Sun Valley, CA

https://rogueartists.org/

Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular

Co-commissioners:

Contemporary American Theater Festival (Shepherdstown, WV)

Los Angeles LGBT Center (Los Angeles, CA)

Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA)

Rogue Artists Ensemble will develop a highly immersive theatrical experience about a queer closeted stuntman’s journey to discover himself in a world of faux masculinity, unmasking the importance and danger of being true to oneself. Based on true-life stories and direct testimonies compiled through extensive research about Hollywood’s stunt community, this project illuminates issues of racial and cultural identity and gives voice to a community that is often sidelined by the movie business.

The image includes two hand-drawn renderings of a human-sized puppet and photographs of old crash dummies. The puppet’s abdomen is missing, exposing the spine and strings inside. The puppet also has a door-like opening in the chest that reveals its heart. The photographs show close-ups of real-life crash dummies and how they are constructed, including close-ups of their joints and faces.
Photo: Rogue Artists Ensemble.

San Cha

Alhambra, CA

https://www.facebook.com/sanchamusica/

Asunción: A Tele-Operetta

Co-commissioners:

Long Beach Opera (Long Beach, CA)

Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (San Jose, CA)

Performance Space New York (New York, NY)

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR)

San Cha’s Asunción: A Tele-Operetta interrogates and dispels the cisgender and heteronormative archetypes that dominated the telenovelas of her youth. Asunción introduces Dolores, a beauty of humble means who, after marrying wealthy Salvador, finds herself caught in a web of jealousy and abuse. During a particularly dark moment, Esperanza, a being of light and empowerment, visits Dolores, giving her the strength to escape Salvador’s control and realize her true value. With a live soundtrack fusing Mariachi, punk, classical music, and electro, this project celebrates the liberating power of ascendant relationships.

A medium-skinned performer stands tall in front of numerous white columns. They wear a dark amber dress fitted with a corset top and black mesh detailing at the shoulders and from the waist down. On the performer’s left arm, they showcase a bird puppet with silver feathers, a black body, a white head, and a black beak with ribbons descending. Their nails are black, and their hair is in an updo with waves, gold and black eye makeup, and large black earrings.
San Cha performing Procession: An Evocation for McQueen with San Cha and Olima at LACMA in Los Angeles (2022).

Sol Ruiz

Hollywood, FL

https://artistecard.com/solruiz

Positive Vibration Nation

Co-commissioners:

Beth Morrison Projects (Brooklyn, NY)

Miami Light Project (Miami, FL)

Positive Vibration Nation is a new full-length multimedia Rock “Guaguanco” Opera by Sol Ruiz that includes six characters who embark on a journey to search for their roots, and through their discoveries and unification, they unlock their musical superhero powers. The show incorporates live performances with integrated technology, such as lighting techniques and visual media, to create an immersive cultural experience of sound, visual art, costume, dance, and Caribbean music. The project reflects artists’ roots as the foundation of Miami’s uniqueness while also connecting the audience with a positive message.

In the foreground, a singer crouches in a powerful stance. Their hair is plumed with flowers and feathers. They wear leather pants and a top fringed with watches. Silhouetted by stage lights in the background stands a guitarist.
Sol Ruiz and Rey Rodriguez performing the short-form work Positive Vibration Nation for Miami Light Project’s commission program – Here & Now 2021. Photo by Elvis Suarez – Glasswork Media.

Vincent Thomas, VT Dance

Towson, MD

https://vtdance.org/

Praise!

Co-commissioners:

Baltimore Theatre Project (Baltimore, MD)

Bethany Arts Community (Ossining, NY)

Sandglass Theater (Putney, VT)

Vincent Thomas and Gabriel Thom Pasculli’s Praise! is an investigation of self and spirit through a child’s experience of church. Through contemporary dance, improvisation, text/movement, a variety of sound sources, and collaborations with other artists, the two performers intertwine their memories and queer, creative, and erotic themes as they attempt to reconcile the mixed messages of coming-of-age within the modern mythos of Christ.

In the foreground, a Black man with a soft blue shirt and white pants sits with his eyes closed and head tilted back in the midst of a song or a shout. His feet are lifted off the floor. In the background, a white-skinned person with dark hair and a dark beard is seated, also calling or speaking, though their image is slightly blurred. The background figure also has one foot slightly lifted and hands raised. Each figure is lit from above and separated by pools of darkness.
Vincent Thomas (foreground) and Gabriel Thom Pasculli (background) in a work-in-progress excerpt from Praise! at the Baltimore Theater Project in April 2023. Photo by Caleb Spenser.