Provincial Profiles, 2001-2002 / Profils provinciaux, 2001-2002 GRANTS TO ONTARIO / SUBVENTIONS À L’ONTARIO Research Unit / Unité de recherche The Canada Council for the Arts / Le Conseil des Arts du Canada August 2002 / août 2002 Ontario Artists and Arts Organizations Funded by The Canada Council, 2001-2002 A total of $2,620,000 in funding was provided to The National Ballet of Canada through the Canada Council’s Dance and Endowments and Prizes Sections. The National Ballet has been producing both classical and modern productions like The Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet and A Delicate Battle since its creation in 1951. The organization also seeks to make ballet accessible to all Canadians through outreach programs like Ballet Talks and Ballet by the Water. These initiatives directly engage the public in how ballets are created and what they mean. The National Ballet of Canada aims to bring to as many Canadians as possible “forceful and relevant new ballets while respecting our traditions.” The AfriCan Theatre Ensemble in Toronto received $38,000 in funding from the Canada Council in 2001-2002, through the Theatre Production Project Grants Program and the Equity Intersectional Capacity Building Program. The AfriCan Theatre Ensemble was formed in 1997 and is committed to bringing Canadian and African art and artists together. A portion of the 2001-2002 funds was used to stage South African playwright Zakes Mda’s work The Girls in Their Sunday Dresses. This staging of Mda’s work was a rare opportunity to expose Canadians to African drama, with the play forming a “culture bridge”1 between the two communities. “The Girls in Their Sunday Dresses” makes a strong statement against the exploitation of any group of people due to their race, gender or economic status. The Canada Council awarded $112,500 in 2001-2002 to Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra, through the Music Section’s Residences and Commissioning of Canadian Compositions Program and Classical Contemporary/New Music Organizations Program. The orchestra used the funds in part to commission a major new symphonic work from Brian Current, a Canadian composer who has won international awards for works such as For the Time Being and YOU ARE. Esprit Orchestra regularly commissions and premiers new works from Canadian composers. Support from the Council is critical to composers and, in this instance, permitted the composer to “begin development in a new phase of my career.” 2 A total of $39,500 in grants went to the Ottawa-Hull Children’s Festival de la jeunesse in 2001-2002 from the Canada Council, through both Inter-Arts and Theatre Section Programs. The Ottawa Children’s Festival has been presenting theatre for young audiences since 1989. Award-winning companies such as Roseneath Productions and Theatre les Deux Mondes entertained but also challenged their young audiences in 2001-2002 through plays like Orpheus and Eurydice. This adaptation of a classical Greek story gave the “children a way to explore the relevance of this myth (it is after all about love, yearning, following your heart, and getting clobbered for your mistakes) to their own experience.”3 1 Grant Proposal: March 1, 2001 2 Written Confirmation: September 13, 2001. 3 Application for Support: December 1, 2000. The Art Gallery of York University received $100,000 in funding in 2001-2002, through the Canada Council’s Assistance to Art Museums and Public Galleries Program. The Art Gallery of York University is a public, non-profit gallery that acts as an educational resource, but also seeks to make its collection readily accessible to the surrounding community. Funding from the Canada Council assists the gallery to present exhibitions such as Christine and Irene Hohenbuchler’s “…pour in”, a collaboration between the artists and other groups including hospital patients and disabled persons. The Art Gallery of York University also presents the work of local artists, such as York University Master of Fine Arts students P. Elaine Sharpe and Rebecca Garrett. Toronto’s widely acclaimed Soulpepper Theatre Company was awarded a total of $112,000 in 2001-2002, through the Canada Council’s Operating Grants to Professional Theatre Organizations and Canadian Creation Programs. The Soulpepper Theatre Company is Toronto’s only classical repertory theatre company, and with the Council’s help has been enjoying success both on and off stage ever since its creation in 1997. The company has increased its season from two to five shows a year, producing classics such as Don Carlos, The School for Wives, and Romeo & Juliet. The Soulpepper Theatre Company has also given back to its community by creating a Youth Mentorship Program that pairs youth-at-risk with members of the company for an eight-week summer program. Award-winning Canadian choreographer Peter Quanz received $8,000 in 2001-2002 from the Canada Council. Funds were awarded through the Grants to Emerging/Mid-Career Dance Professionals Program. Quanz has created works including Billion Dollar-Baby for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Summit for Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet. The 2001-2002 funding has allowed the artist to study the choreography of world-famous companies such as the Paris Opera Ballet and Dutch National Ballet. Quanz notes that the Canada Council’s “interest in the development of individual artists is exceptional” and that its “system of funding is a very special resource that has allowed me to undergo studies that would have otherwise been impossible.”4 Toronto’s literary festival Scream in High Park was awarded $2,300 in funds in 2001-2002 through the Canada Council’s Literary Readings and Festivals Program. Initiated in 1993, the highly acclaimed poetry festival is an artist-run, non-profit event that attracts up to 1,200 people to High Park’s Ampitheatre. Established writers and poets such as Anne Michaels present their material alongside emerging artists such as Corrodo Paina, an arrangement that has the benefit of exposing less well-known writers to the established audiences of higher-profile writers. Wayne Dunkley is a Toronto-based artist who received $60,000 in funding in 2001-2002 from the Canada Council through the Grants to New Media and Audio Artists Program. Dunkley is the author of the website sharemyworld.net, which examines issues of racism. Funds were presented to support the creation of Neither Here nor There: Diaries of Suspension, a web- based storytelling project that explores the experiences of immigrants and their children in Canada, experiences that Dunkley notes are “arguably the predominant experience of Canadians.”5 4 Final Report: March 5, 2002. 5 Description of the proposed project: October 1, 2001. The Canada Council assisted Trinity Square Video, one of Canada’s oldest artist-run video centres, with $105,000 in funding in 2001-2002. Funds were given through a variety of Media Arts Programs. Trinity Square Video’s mandate is to provide artists and community groups with access to recording and post-production equipment for the creation of non-commercial works. Members include organizations such as the South Asian Visual Arts Collective and Women in Film and Television. Trinity Square Video also offers workshops and programs such as the Youth Video Initiative, in which community groups are supported in their efforts to engage youth-at-risk and train them in video production skills. Thunder Bay flutist Penelope Clarke was granted $3,000 in support in 2001-2002 from the Canada Council. Funding was awarded under the Grants to Professional Musicians - Classical Music of all World Cultures Program. The Council’s award allowed the artist to travel to Saint Amour, France and study with Monsieur Louis Moyse, one of the last living representatives of the flute’s 19th century ‘golden age.’ Penelope Clark is committed to taking these unique teachings and passing them onto her Canadian students “in order to ensure that this aspect of our musical history is not lost to today’s musicians.”6 In 2001-2002, the Porcupine’s Quill publishing house in Erin, ON received $70,300 through the Canada Council’s Book Publishing Support – Block Grants and Author Promotion Tours Programs. The Porcupine’s Quill was created in 1974 with a mandate to publish mainly contemporary Canadian writings. Since then, it has served as the starting point for many now- famous Canadian authors such as Jane Urquhart, Andrew Pyper and Russell Smith, all of whom published some of their first works through the company. Though these particular writers have since moved on to larger organizations, the Porcupine’s Quill still focuses on finding and supporting new authors, acting as a literary “launching pad to fame.”7 Ontario writers Richard B. Wright and Thomas Homer-Dixon, were the recipients of Governor General’s Literary Awards in 2001-2002. Wright is a novelist who won in the fiction category for his novel Clara Callan, a story set in the Great Depression that chronicles the lives of two sisters through their letters and diaries. Homer-Dixon won in the non-fiction category for The Ingenuity Gap, a work that illustrates how the world’s problems may be increasing in complexity. The Ontario laureates each received awards of $15,000 from the Council. 6 Project Description: April 3, 2001 7Company Profile: December 1, 2000 Artistes et organismes artistiques de l’Ontario ayant reçu un appui financier du Conseil des Arts du Canada en 2001-2002 En 2001-2002, le Conseil des Arts a octroyé au Ballet national du Canada 2 620 000 $ par l’entremise de divers programmes offerts par le Service de la danse, et par le Service des Prix et dotations. Depuis sa création, en 1951, le Ballet national a produit des œuvres classiques et modernes telles La Belle au bois dormant, Roméo et Juliette et A Delicate Battle.