Performing Arts Japan 2015-2016
List of Awardees
The Japan Foundation is pleased to announce grant awards totaling US$216,000, CA$14,000,
to 8 organizations in Canada and the United States through the PAJ Program for the2015-2016 fiscal year. The grant recipients are listed below. (Please contact the JapanFoundation, New York for further information and finalized performance dates).

Touring Grant awards
Total projects: 4Total funds allocated: $147,000
Grant amounts: $20,000 – $50,000

Fuse Box Austin (Austin, TX) for a four-city North American premiere tour of Tetsuya
Umeda’s site-specific sound and light installations and performances It Was Moving At First.
Tour Date: September 19, 2015 – April 16, 2016
Tour Locations: Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR); The Roy and Edna
Disney Center/CalArts Theater - REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA); Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX);
Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, OH)

Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL) for a five-city tour of experimental
playwright/director Toshiki Okada’s newest project God Bless Baseball (working title).
Tour Dates: January 14 – February 12, 2016
Tour Locations: Japan Society (New York, NY); FringeArts (Philadelphia, PA); Museum ofContemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL); Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH); The
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (College Park, MD)

The Elaine Summers Experimental Intremedia Foundation, Inc. (New York, NY) for a
sixteen-city U.S. tour of the quartet of Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixer), Jason Kahn
(drums, percussion), Tetuzi Akiyama (acoustic guitar), and Bryan Eubanks (saxphone, open
circuit boards).
Tour Dates: October 30 – November 16, 2015
Tour Locations: Good Shepherd Chapel (Seattle, WA); Disjecta Contemporary Art Center(Portland, OR); San Francisco Sound (San Francisco, CA); California Institute of the Arts (LosAngeles, CA); Nameless Sound/MECA (Houston, TX); Southwest School of Art (San Antonio,TX); Crow With No Mouth/Studio Z (St. Paul, MN); Constellation/Frequency Series (Chicago,IL; Oberlin College and Conservatory (Oberlin, OH); Dreamland (Louisville, KY); The
University of Alabama School of Music (Tuscaloosa, AL); Conundrum Music Hall (Columbia,SC); Black Iris Gallery (Richmond, VA); Bowerbird (Philadelphia, PA); Non-Event (Boston,MA); Issue Project Room (Brooklyn, NY)University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI) for a nine-city North America tour of Umusuna:
Memories Before History by butoh dance company Sankai Juku.
Tour Dates: October 1 – November 9, 2015
Tour Locations: Meany Hall for the Performing Arts, University of Washington (Seattle, WA);
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA); Mondavi Center, University ofCalifornia-Davis (Davis, CA); Royce Hall, UCLA (Los Angeles, CA); Power Center for the
Performing Arts, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI); Brooklyn Academy of Music(Brooklyn, NY); National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada); Memorial Hall, University of North
Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC); Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, VA)

Collaboration Grant awards
Total projects: 4Total funds allocated: USD$69,000, CAD14,000
Grant amounts: $10,000 – $34,000

The Graduate Center, CUNY dba The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (New York, NY)
for Performance Robot Dramaturgy (PRD): Japan/U.S. that Japanese group Off Nibroll(Mikuni Yanaihara and Keisuke Takahashi) and U.S. artists Marianne Weems from The
Builder’s Association and scholars to investigate performance robot dramaturgy and theemergence of android theatre.
Project Period: July 2015 – December 2015

The Jazz Gallery (New York, NY) for Ten Thousand Leaves – a long-durational audio-visualproject producing live performances, video and educational outreach by
vocalist/composer/multi-instrumentalist Becca Stevens, composer Aya Nishina, and visualartist Shimpei Takeda.
Project Period: March 2016 – June 2016

Small World Music Society (Toronto, ON) for Indigenous Infusion: A Japan-CanadaCollaboration, a collaborative work between the Ainu performer Oki Kano and Canadian First
Nations performer Kinnie Starr.
Project Period: April 2016

Yara Arts Group (New York, NY) for Shank’s Mare, a puppet theatre collaboration between
American puppet artist Tom Lee and Japanese master puppeteer Koryu Nishikawa V(Hachioji Kuruma Ningyo) that explores the themes of life and death and passing on tradition.
Project Period: September – December, 2015

PAJ Advisory Committee Members (as of December 2014)
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Mr. Aaron Greenwald (Director, Duke Performances, Duke University)
Mr. Ben Johnson (Program Manager, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA)
Mr. Jordan Peimer (Executive Director, ArtPower! at UC San Diego)
Ms. Tina Rasmussen (Director, Harborfront Center, Toronto)
Mr. David Ravel (Director, Alverno Presents)
Ms. Sabrina Motley (Director, Smithsonian Folklife Festival)
Ms. Sara Nash (Program Manager, National Dance Project)