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SUNDANCE INSTITUTE’S NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAM NAMES GRANTEES, AND ART OF PRACTICE FELLOWS

New Collaborative “Exploded Lab” Format Supports Artists As They Explore Creating Across Disciplines

Los Angeles, CA — The Sundance Institute’s Interdisciplinary Program (IDP) is pleased to announce supported artists of two new cohorts: the 2021 Interdisciplinary Program Grantees and the 2021–2022 Art of Practice Fellows. The nonprofit Institute’s mission and values have nurtured a powerful community of artists throughout its 40-year history and developed a flexible and innovative approach to artist support. This allowed the Institute to evolve nimble solutions in tenuous times, as the current global pandemic disrupts artists whose work is based on location, synchronicity, and new technology.

The Interdisciplinary Program
To address these circumstances created by the pandemic, in 2020 the Institute united its Film Music, New Frontier Labs, and Theatre programs to create the Interdisciplinary Program, which brings a holistic approach and an equitable focus to supporting creators. Cultivating the cross-pollination of artists at various stages in their respective practices, the IDP fosters a dynamic, year-round interdisciplinary community, bridging silos by scaffolding experimentation and collaboration. The team responsible for the program includes Ruthie Doyle, Peter Golub, and Ana Verde.

The Art of Practice Fellowship: An “Exploded Lab”
Starting this month, the program’s pilot Art of Practice Fellowship will focus on these newly-convened communities, offering opportunity, exploration, and inclusive recovery. Rooted in the qualitative research with artists and field leaders that helped shape the Program’s design, including the commissioned Emerging from the Cave field study, the Art of Practice fellowship uses long-standing Institute program infrastructures as a foundation. Testing, prototyping and co-creating, the Fellowship keeps a generous community of unique voices at its heart.

With the goals of expanding and strengthening artists’ overall creative practice, Fellows will engage in peer-to-peer and mentor conversations, have the opportunity for in-person residencies at MASS MoCA and UCross Foundation, have access to granting and a developing online collaboration and timebanking application, and gather virtually to further social, career, and project needs. The fellowship is facilitated by IDP staff and five IDP artist Community Leaders, with the ultimate goal of a sustainable artist-centered structure.

“With an “exploded lab” ecosystem, a cultural incubator community, we will extend the collaboration and generative environment of a Sundance Lab across a full year, involving a larger, more varied group of artists. This comes at a pivotal time in the pandemic landscape for artists in these fields, especially artists whose voices have been marginalized or excluded,” said Interdisciplinary Program Director, Ruthie Doyle.

The cohort is a mix of backgrounds, expertise, and career stages, centering on artists from historically underrepresented groups. The program identified 68 artists as part of the Art of Practice Fellowship this pilot year: 40 are theater, composing, emerging media and innovative cross-disciplinary artists previously supported by Sundance; and 20 are artists who had not previously been supported, selected via a pool of nominations from alumni, key regional peer and partner organizations, and advisors. Incorporating a collaborative approach to artist advisory, the cohort is rounded out by five Community Leaders, selected for their singular voice and excellence in activating their respective communities: Sarah Ellis, Adil Mansoor, Cat Rodriguez, Wesley Taylor, and Xin Xin; and three Sundance Institute Board artist advisors Lisa Kron, Junaid Sarieddeen, and Lynette Wallworth. Quarterly artist-advisors include Jesse Alick, Dr. P Carl, Kat Cizek, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, and Adaora Udoji.

To read the full article, click here.

2021 Sundance Institute Film Music Intensive: Meet the Fellows

In spring of 2021, the Sundance Institute conducted an online Film Music Intensive, an all-too-infrequent chance to create and claim some free creative space and examine something that fascinates us all: What happens when you combine music and film to tell a story?

We welcomed extraordinary emerging composers Chanell Crichlow, Olivia Komahcheet, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, Alexandra Kalinowski, Dana Lynn, and EmmoLei Sankofa as fellows. They worked with a stellar group of creative advisors from across the industry, including Kathryn Bostic, George S. Clinton, Mychael Danna, Laura Karpman, Heather McIntosh, Blake Neely, Jeff Rona, Adam Smalley, and Christopher Willis.

During the Intensive, fellows wrote music to pictures and engaged in a series of presentations and discussions, working closely with the advisors to develop their art and craft as film composers.

To read the full article, click here.

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