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UCLA NATIONAL DANCE/MEDIA PROJECT NAMES YEAR 2000 FELLOWS

Carolyn Campbell (ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu) (310) 825-6540
For Immediate Use Thursday, December 02, 1999.

Eight individuals have been chosen to participate in the UCLA National Dance/Media Project Fellowship Program. The 10-week residency, which begins in January 2000, is a major initiative of the Center for Intercultural Performance in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture's Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC).

Fellows are selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants and undergo a rigorous screening process. The year 2000 Fellows include six professional choreographers and film/video artists -- Pooh Kaye (Worcester, New York), Eva Lee (Volcano, Hawaii), Linda Lewett (Arlington, Virginia), Judy Lieff (Santa Monica, California), Mitchell Rose (Los Angeles), Charlie Steiner (Jersey City, New Jersey) – and UCLA WAC graduate students Valida Hadzimuratovic-Carroll and Carol Lyn McDowell.

Now in its third year, the Fellowship Program is an intensive professional workshop that provides the opportunity to study with distinguished leaders in the fields of dance and media. Fellows develop collaborative projects that explore the cutting edge of documentation and dance/media experimentation. While at UCLA, they have access to the rich resources of the Department of World Arts and Cultures and the Center for Intercultural Performance.

The UCLA National Dance/Media Project is designed to enhance the quality, quantity and accessibility of dance documentation. The program fosters generative strategies that record dance and enhance its creative practice and intellectual investigation. In addition to the Fellowship Program, components include the Leadership Group, a core advisory team that meets annually to provide expertise and develop strategies for advancement in the field of dance.

The UCLA National Dance/Media Project along with the National Initiative to Preserve America's Dance (NIPAD), Washington, DC, comprise SAVE AS: DANCE, a multimillion dollar national initiative funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts that advances the ability of artists and communities to document and preserve dance choreography and traditions. SAVE AS: DANCE supports the significant contribution of dance artists and dance traditions to the development of American culture through documentation, preservation and public access. The Save As: Dance web site address is http://save-as-dance.org.

The Pew Charitable Trusts support nonprofit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion. Based in Philadelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments to help organizations and citizens develop practical solutions to difficult problems. In 1998, with approximately $4.7 billion in assets, the Trusts invested over $213 million to 298 nonprofit organizations.

For further information about these and other programs, visit the Center for Intercultural Performance's web site at www.wac.ucla.edu/cip or contact Sue Fan at (310) 267-0160 or at sfan@arts.ucla.edu.

Detailed biographical information about each recipient follows.

2000 UCLA National Dance Media Fellows Biographies

Valida Hadzimuratovic-Carroll (Venice, CA) is in her first year of the M.A. Dance Ethnography program in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures. Originally from Bosnia, she immigrated to the United States in 1994, and received her B.A.from the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures in 1999. Her primary focus of study is ritualized music and dance. In 1998, under the sponsorship of UCLA's Student Committee for the Arts, her fascination with the ritual aspects of raves culminated in a 30-cast-member multi-media stage production entitled "Betwixt'n'Between: A glimpse of the E-lectronic Culture" that was shown at UCLA's Freud Theater. This initial experience of working with mixed media ignited her passion for video. After she received the 1998 President's Undergraduate Fellow grant, which secured the necessary funding, she directed and produced "The Youth of Sarajevo: After the Aftermath," a 21-minute documentary that offers a glimpse into the lives of several young adults in Bosnia. Her current interests involve the merging of her two passions: music/dance and video.

Pooh Kaye (Worcester, NY) is a choreographer, performer and filmmaker. She received an undergraduate degree in fine arts from The Cooper Union in New York City. From 1973 until 1976, she worked with performance pioneers Joan Jonas and Simone Forti. Since 1975 she has been performing her own brand of choreography, first as a soloist and then with her dance company, Eccentric Motions. In 1975 she began documenting site performances created exclusively for the camera. Both her choreographic work and her films have garnered praise, awards and grants, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation grant, the Best of 1989 New York Times Choice, and numerous federal, state and local grants, film awards, commissions and residencies. Kaye is currently working on a solo performance that will be premiered at the Joyce Downtown in New York City, as well as a pixelated film based on three Yiddish folktales.

Eva Lee (Volcano, HI) is a choreographer, videographer and performer. Originally from New England, she moved to Hawaii in 1976, and received her B.A.in drama and dance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has been a resident of Volcano Village since 1981. For over twenty years she has produced her own work for local, national and international audiences. Her performance work has been featured in cultural programs aired on PBS, ABC, CBS and China's National Television networks. Lee has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographers Fellowship, as well as numerous state choreographic awards since 1978. Her work has been commissioned by companies in China, New York, Kentucky, Virginia and Hawaii. Recently, she has worked as a freelance videographer for non-profit arts organizations in Hawaii. Her video work has been used for the purpose of documentation, preservation and broadcast of dance and arts programming on Hawaii's cable access and the local PBS affiliate. She is the artistic director of The Choreographers' Hui, a dance collective in Hawaii,

Linda Lewett (Arlington, VA) is an independent media producer/director specializing in the fine and performing arts. She received a B.A. cum laude in communications from American University in 1984. She recently formed ARTtv, a non-profit organization that produce arts programming. For fifteen years, she has produced work including broadcast documentaries, educational, promotional and gallery exhibition tapes. Lewett collaborates with choreographers on films, dance for the camera and concert videography. She has received numerous awards, including a New York Festival Silver Medal for "Legacy of Generations: Pottery by American Indian Women" produced in high definition for WETA-PBS; Cine Golden Eagle for Liz Lerman “Moving Jewish Communities;” and four National Hometown Video awards for "Metro Dance/Arts," a multi-camera concert series produced through Fairfax Channel 10. Her collaborative work with performance artists has been presented in various venues including Exit Art, the Kitchen, Philadelphia Art Museum, AFI Women Make Movies Festival and Maat Schaptij in Amsterdam.

Judy Lieff (Santa Monica, CA) is a dancer, experimental filmmaker and teacher. She worked for years as a dancer and assistant choreographer before returning to school in 1989 to create a graduate degree synthesizing film/video and dance at the California Institute of the Arts. Her short films have garnered several awards and have been screened internationally at festivals, on cable television, and in theatrical showcases. "Duties of My Heart," her short film synthesizing dance and American Sign Language as it relates a poem, was the catalyst for four consecutive grants from the Durfee Foundation, the California Community Foundation and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. These grants funded workshops she designed to teach deaf and hard-of-hearing students the fundamentals of video production and dance and how they apply to American Sign Language poetry and storytelling. This year her students' video projects won First Place Student Video from the Hollywood Radio and Television Association, and KLCS-TV's Video in the Classroom awards. She is currently teaching a movement design course she developed for animators, along with functioning as a performer/choreographer for motion capture projects.

Carol Lyn McDowell (Los Angeles) began her dance studies with Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin in Hawaii. She graduated from Bennington College in 1979 with a double major in choreography and theater design, and moved to New York City. She was a member of Kei Takei's Moving Earth, touring Europe and Israel as both a performer and lighting designer. In 1983 she began working with performance artist Tim Miller and performed with him at venues including the Kitchen, the Next Wave Festival (Brooklyn Academy of Music), the Kai Theater Festival (Belgium) and Colorado Dance Festival. Together with Diane Butler, Barbara Dilley and Polly Motley, she is a founding member of the Mariposa Dance Collective in Boulder, Colorado. In 1985 she received a New York Dance and Performance Award (BESSIE) for her "architecture of light" in John Bernd's "Be Good to Me." From 1992-98 she was a faculty member in the InterArts Department, the Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado and also served as the director of the Performing Arts Center at the Naropa Institute. Currently she is in her second year of the M.F.A./Choreography program in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA.

Mitchell Rose (Hollywood, CA) is a director, writer and choreographer. He received his M.F.A. degree from the American Film Institute and B.A. degree from Tufts University. He began directing the Mitchell Rose Dance Company in 1974. In 1978 he created a duo under the auspices of the Cultural Council Foundation CETA Artists Project, performing extensively for three years at festivals, schools, hospitals, museums and prisons. In 1981 he formed "Mitchell Rose (dance, comedy, theatre)," a solo program for its first two years and a duo company from 1984 to 1991. He has presented his work at numerous venues, including the Spoleto Festivals in the U.S. and Italy, the Joyce Theatre, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Central Park's Delacorte Theatre, and the International Mime and Clown Festival. He disbanded his company in 1991 to become a directing fellow at the American Film Institute. Since then he has written and directed short films, written screenplays, and directed music videos while occasionally choreographing and performing.

Charlie Steiner (Jersey City, NJ) is a photojournalist, videographer and documentary producer. His photos have been published in LIFE, Paris Match, the New York Times Magazine and Art Forum, and on record jackets, including for Bob Dylan. He covered revolution in the Philippines and counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, and has had his documentary photography exhibited in several galleries. His video footage has aired on the newscasts of all of the United States networks and in Canada and Japan. Some of his award-winning documentaries look at the relation between culture and politics – Poland and the Philippines – while others profile performing artists and the cultures in which they work – East Bengal and West Texas. He has been documenting the work of avant-garde dancer Min Tanaka since 1979, and in recent years he has videotaped other American and international traditional and contemporary dancers. Steiner teaches media literacy and video production to New York City schoolchildren, and he created a multi-channel video installation exhibited in New York this year.


Contact: Carolyn Campbell
Phone: (310) 825-6540
Email: ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu