BCA supports home-grown talent in Westchester Sq.
afford to catch a show at Lincoln
Center.
“There was an older gentleman
who came to one of my
performances and had never
seen a ballet before,” Mc-
Queen said. “He was a former
football player, not the kind of
guy you would typically call
‘artsy.’ But I’ll never forget, he
came up to me after the show
and said, ‘That was the coolest
thing I’ve ever seen.”
The BCA grant, known as
the Bronx Recognizes its Own
Award, is given out annually
to Bronx sculptors, writers,
musicians and artists of all
mediums. The award supports
the artists’ individual endeavors,
as well as service projects
for artists to give back to their
community.
Davalois Fearon, a threetime
recipient of the grant,
used the award to provide
dance workshops at the Bronx
Library Center. Conceived after
her nephew passed away
from a fatal asthma attack,
Fearon’s workshops use movement
to tell the stories of people
who are most vulnerable to
public health risks.
Kiara Jones is a Bronx
Farmer and community organizer Karen Washington speaks at the Bronx Council on the Arts open house on
November 23.
fi lmmaker who used the council’s
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BY GUS FISHER
When Jeremy McQueen
fi rst saw the Phantom of the
Opera at the age of eight, he
was captured by the magic of
dance. But after enrolling in
ballet school, he was quickly
confronted with the reality of
being Black in the white-dominated
world of ballet.
Years later, McQueen developed
‘The Storm,’ a ballet
that represented his own experience
and identity. The 22-
minute piece told the story of
Black communities persevering
through Hurricane Katrina
and Hurricane Harvey.
It was predominantly funded
by a $5,000 grant from the
Bronx Council on the Arts.
“We don’t fund people to
just stay in their home and
paint, as great as that is,” said
Bryan Glover, the council’s director
of grants and programs,
in an interview. “We want artists
to go out and engage with
the people around them.”
McQueen leveraged the
council’s grant to bring the
experiences of his community
to the world of ballet – and the
world of ballet to people in his
community, who often can’t
BRONX TIMES R 30 EPORTER, MARCH13-19, 2020 BTR
grant to develop an ambitious
sci-fi movie about life on
earth in the wake of environmental
catastrophe. “A project
of this magnitude requires a
lot of resources to get off the
ground,” Jones said. “Technology
makes fi lmmaking more
inexpensive in some ways. But
it also has set the expectations
way higher.”
Poet Heather Archibald
said that, aside from fi nancial
security, the award provided
her with the motivation to
keep pursuing her craft. “One
year ago, I was in the nursing
home recovering from two
surgeries, feeling down and
depressed,” said poet Heather
Archibald in an interview.
“When I got the email saying
‘congratulations, you won the
grant,’ I got up and started
walking again.”
Artists from throughout
the borough gathered to exchange
ideas, inspirations and
contacts at the council’s open
house on Westchester Square.
The night’s theme was Sustainability
in the Arts, which
lead to conversations about
art as a tool to represent climate
change, using community
gardens as a venue for art
performances and how to reduce
waste of art materials.
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