BMI Foundation Awards 5th Annual Woody Guthrie Fellowships

Posted in News on August 9, 2010

The winners of the fifth annual Woody Guthrie Fellowship have been announced by Ralph N. Jackson, President of the BMI Foundation, Inc., and Nora Guthrie, Executive Director of the Woody Guthrie Archives (WGA) and Foundation. The program funds research fellowships for scholars to use the rich and extensive holdings available at the WGA in New York City.

The 2010 recipients and their projects are as follows:

Bart Bull
Project Title: Dance Along - Woody Guthrie, Marjorie Mazia, and the Dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company
Project Description: Book; Multiple Magazine Features

Bart Bull is an award-winning journalist, critic, writer and popular historian. His research project intends to recuperate and valorize the overlooked significance of dancer, teacher, and second wife of Woody Guthrie, Marjorie Mazia, highlighting her work and that of the New York City dance world she inhabited in order to elucidate the importance and contribution to the historical trajectory of their lasting imprint on American culture. The project will illuminate NYC’s dance-centered cultural scene and its connection to the Guthries’ personal/professional relationship.

Billy Yalowitz
Project Title: East Towards Home
Project Description: Performance: Movement-Theatre-Video; Journal Article

Billy Yalowitz, a talented, promising young producer, will develop an unconventional and topical work that joins Guthrie’s relationship to NYC’s community of progressive Jewish artists (poets, dancers, musicians) and the movement work explored by Maslow’s New Dance Group during the 1940s. The work will explore the intersection of progressive leftist ideology and activism; a lost history revived through the creation and production of a multimedia and choreographed dance performance. The project aims to revitalize the nexus of art and politics for a new generation of activist and activism.

Established in 1972, the Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. Dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of information about Woody Guthrie’s vast cultural legacy, the WGA houses the largest collection of Woody Guthrie material in the world. Since it’s opening in 1996, the Woody Guthrie Archives has been a major success and has become an important resource for the general public, musicians, singers, songwriters, scholars, and public and private cultural institutions wishing to access the research collection.

The BMI Foundation, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1985 to support the creation, performance and study of music through awards, scholarships, commissions and grants. Tax-deductible donations to the Foundation come primarily from songwriters, composers and publishers, BMI employees and members of the public with a special interest in music. Because both the Foundation staff and the distinguished members of the Advisory Panel serve without compensation, more than 97% of all donations and income are used for charitable grants.

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