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Up Next BOSTON CONSERVATORY AWARDS 2018 ENTREPRENEURIAL GRANTS TO THREE INNOVATIVE ALUMNAE

Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Alumni Entrepreneurial Grant Program empowers alumni to explore and develop their unique programmatic ideas in the arts. The grant funds innovative, impactful performance endeavors that expand the artist’s toolkit as a performer, leader, and businessperson while fostering a creative spirit. Established in 2013, this program has seeded ideas that have become fledgling theater companies, supported cutting-edge contemporary dance works, and more.

FELICIA CHEN (M.M. '17, contemporary classical music performance)

From an early age, Asian American singer Felicia Chen knew that she wanted to pursue a career in music. Reflecting on her struggle to find role models in the contemporary music world that shared her cultural background, Chen says, “I’ve had to empower myself to carve my own path. I’ve also had to work harder to seek out artists who are like myself.” This experience inspired Chen to use her art to promote cultural diversity in contemporary music. To do this, Chen and cellist Olivia Harris, a Boston Conservatory at Berklee classmate, founded a duo called Mazumal. The name Mazumal is a mixture of words that represent both the benevolence and malevolence of female deities from Chen’s Taiwanese and Harris’s Caribbean ancestry. Mazumal commissions work by composers and poets from often marginalized communities, and, through carefully designed performance experiences, fosters a new social understanding of contemporary classical music. This past summer, Mazumal performed at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at University of California, Berkeley and participated in a residency program at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. The duo also served as ensemble fellows of the Cortona Sessions Contemporary Chamber Music Initiative in Cortona, Italy.

ALEXIS SCHEER (B.F.A. '14, musical theater)

Alexis Scheer describes her playwriting style as brazenly millenial and fiercely feminist, exploring subjects through a Latinx lens. As producing artistic director and founder of Boston-based Off the Grid Theatre Company (OTG), Scheer not only intends to bring underrepresented stories to the theater, but she also hopes that her work will resonate with a millennial audience. “As [millennials] grew up, technology was exploding at a rate that nobody could keep up with. We speak a certain way and we have a different sense of humor. In a lot of areas of life, we’re the least repressed, and the most progressive generation.” Receiving this award reminds Scheer of OTG’s humble beginnings. “It started in the basement of Boston Conservatory—literally. I had written some short plays that I wanted to direct. I got together with some really talented peers and we performed a staged reading of four short plays that I wrote…and 12 people came!” Since then, OTG has grown to produce awardwinning, nationally recognized productions. This summer, Scheer was named a Rising Theater Star in the Improper Bostonian magazine’s 2018 Boston’s Best issue. The grant supported OTG’s August 2018 workshop premiere of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, a play that follows a gang of teenage girls who, among other things, try to resurrect the spirit of Pablo Escobar.

TAYLOR RODMAN (B.F.A. '16, contemporary dance)

Taylor Rodman and her friend and coartistic director Emily Bernet used to spend their lunch periods choreographing dance routines in the studio of Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Texas. Four years later, they found themselves in the same room founding Bombshell Dance Project. “We created [Bombshell Dance Project] because there’s always a need for the female choreographic voice…a lot of female dancers typically dance ‘pretty’ or almost like the damsel-in-distress—we wanted to flip that convention.” Rodman’s award partially funded Bombshell Dance Project’s latest project, Like a Girl, which is a response to Rodman’s personal experience as a female dancer in the industry. In the piece, Rodman strives to capture the female perspective, reimagine ideals of femininity, and challenge social norms. “There’s something powerful about coming at it from the angle of actual female voices rather than male choreographers trying to implant their visions of what it means to be female.”

Learn more about the Boston Conservatory at Berklee Alumni Entrepreneurial Grant program and how to apply: bostonconservatory.berklee.edu/alumni/ alumni-opportunities