SPRING 1998
Grants: The giving of grants is implicitly an act of criticism; so- and-so gets $25,000 grant. So-and SO- receives $2,500. There is no escaping the assumption that one of these is the better artist. So many factors enter into these decisions: experience, track record, who knows who, the appraisals of critics, the tastes and opinions of the deciding panels. Inevitably some will get hurt and the sun will shine on others. There is no perfect system.
What if you create with vigor and are ignored by grant reviewers? Do you give up? Few givers have roiled me more profoundly than the new York State Arts Council. Their grant applications were so detailed and complex that only with the assistance of an accountant could they be completed. Further, one report a year was not good enough for them. They asked for several. This charade meant that one had to spend at least ten percent of the grant money to pay the accountant. Bitterness of all they had the temerity to leave this question for the end of the application form:
If you do not receive a grant what will you do with this project?
Whenever I would come across this moment, I would pray for a magic voice, one that would be heard all the way to Albany to roar, “You know all too well , that in spite of everything, we will plow on, so why do you push us into a corner and think that denying a grant will not make a significant difference?”
For many years, I received no grants form the National Endowment of the Arts. It hurt. Did I doubt myself? I always doubt myself but that never stops me from working and producing. Then one day in 1980, my then manager,Keith King announced that he was filling out a grant application for the National Endowment for the Arts for 1981. ” They want to know what you would do with the money.” As close as I can remember I dictated the following:
I plan to do a dance about Spring-or not about Spring. You might think I am joking. I am. I never discuss my creative ideas with anyone, not my bed-mates and certainly not with a group unknown to me in Washington. Further, I have been making up an answer to that question year after year despite the fact I have no idea what I am going to work on in the next year. I sit here and concoct what might appear to you as a worthy project and I still do not get a nickle out of you. I lie and all I get is humiliation. Enough. I am going to do a dance about Spring-or not about Spring, of indeterminate length and for this I will need $5000.
The best joke of all- I got the $5,000. I am guessing that I struck a nerve among the choreographers on the committee and regardless of what they thought of my work, they connected to what I said.
