LIKE other choreographers awarded grants through the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Program, Jodi Melnick never applied. And like the others, she received the news out of the blue, delivered in the form of a call — in her case on Skype — by the program’s ebullient director, Damian Woetzel.
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Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Damian Woetzel with Jodi Melnick.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Ms. Melnick said. “I really didn’t believe it. So I’m getting this grant money — it’s $10,000 — and listen to this: If I want to work with other dancers, I could probably get another five and if I want to work with a bigger group, I could probably get more than that and then get a matching grant.”
She laughed in gleeful disbelief. Even though Ms. Melnick focuses on the solo form and is not planning to create a spectacle “with big overhead,” as she put it, having the option to do so is rare. New Essential Works, which finances the development of new dances, was created by the Jerome Robbins Foundation in the fall of 2009 in response to the financial crisis. Allen Greenberg and Daniel Stern, a trustees at the foundation, and Christopher Pennington, its executive director, were concerned about the prospect of a lost period of choreography.
Many of the grants pair a choreographer with a dance company, but Ms. Melnick’s award was the first to sponsor an individual choreographer without a specific project in mind. So far most awards have benefited struggling ballet companies and choreographers whose work might otherwise have fallen through the cracks.
The program provides about $250,000 a year with grants generally ranging from $10,000 to $35,000. Eleven grants have been awarded, with at least five pending. (In 2010 the Jerome Robbins Foundation gave away about $1.8 million.)
Mr. Woetzel makes decisions about grants with Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Pennington and Mr. Stern. “Some of this is about companies in need,” Mr. Woetzel said. “Some of it is about choreographers who perhaps need more work or it would be nice to see taking a step forward that otherwise they might not be able to take.”
This year New Essential Works will collaborate with Yaddo to recommend candidates for choreographic residencies. One word that Mr. Woetzel continually returns to in describing the program is relevance. “That’s what is so wonderful about the New program,” he said. “It is about filling a need. It is about everything, from economics to art, and it’s about today, so that’s great. It’s not based on the high-mindedness of ‘this is the utopic way things should be.’ ”
Mr. Woetzel, a former principal with New York City Ballet, isn’t the type to wait around for things to happen. As the artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival and a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, he has connections and is often able to finagle matching grants. Mr. Woetzel’s networking efforts, frequently in tandem with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Knight Foundation, generally benefit smaller ballet companies outside New York.
The first sponsored work, Matthew Neenan’s “At the Border,” choreographed for the Pennsylvania Ballet, will also be performed by Nevada Ballet Theater in March. Jessica Lang’s “Solo in Nine Parts,” created for Kansas City Ballet, will be shown at Eugene Ballet and Alaska Dance Theater in April.
In the case of Oregon Ballet Theater, which presented a new work by Emery LeCrone in April, Christopher Stowell, the company’s artistic director, was impressed by the program’s immediacy.
“It’s the kind of thing that can sometimes take three years to develop,” he said. “This happened very fast. We didn’t have a brand new work in the season for the first time in many years, and they wanted to make a difference. One thing that was interesting is that they would only fund something that we would add to that season.”
At Sacramento Ballet the choreographer Brian Reeder presented “Market Crash” in April. The work, set to a score by Eric Moe, explores the notion of panic and anxiety and will be done by the company again in May. “It wasn’t like, ‘We need for you to make an opener or a closer for us,’ ” Mr. Reeder said. “It was more, ‘Make what you want.’ I felt very free and open, and that’s not always the case.”
New Essential Works also has a partnership with the Baryshnikov Arts Center, where, during the fall, three contemporary choreographers — Stefanie Batten Bland, John Heginbotham and Elena Demyanenko, all chosen by Mikhail Baryshnikov — were granted five-week residencies and $10,000 each. The center’s executive director, Stanford Makishi, said the center also provided technical and administrative support.
“The goal was very much in the spirit of what the New Essential Works program was doing with regional ballet companies,” he said. “We wanted to potentially lift the careers of these people.”
The center hosted several showings of the choreographers’ work throughout the fall. On Sunday afternoon they will present dances created during their residencies as part of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters showcase. This year the residency program will focus on Broadway dance.
“The chance to work on Broadway choreography as opposed to having to deliver Broadway choreography can be two distinct things,” Mr. Woetzel said. “I think there’s a role to be played in the idea of: What is a Broadway choreographer today? How do you become a Broadway choreographer? What are the skill sets?”
In many ways Mr. Woetzel, armed with curiosity, is still developing his eye for choreographers.
“In ballet class Stanley Williams used to say, ‘I don’t see it,’ and it was so frustrating because you wanted to say: ‘That’s a brisé. I just did it.’ ”
Mr. Woetzel said he experienced a similar sensation when watching dances. “Is it blurry?” he asked. “Is it in focus? Has this been thought through? Does it make sense, or does it make sense that it doesn’t make sense? I just want to have experiences that matter in the theater.
“There’s a part of me that just loves dancing,” he continued. “I could sit and watch the Nicholas Brothers all night, happily, on one level, but then I’m also dying to see Jodi just stand there and move her arm over the course of 20 minutes. There are no rules.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction
Correction: January 10, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a dance company in the Northwest. It is Oregon Ballet Theater, not Oregon Dance Theater.
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