Rosy Simas has been awarded a $54,000 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Minneapolis choreographer Rosy Simas attracted accolades last year for her multimedia project "We Wait in Darkness," which draws on her Seneca heritage and critiques treatment of native tribes. The Star Tribune gave her an honorable mention in its annual artists of the year roundup, and City Pages also named her an artist of the year for dance.
Now Simas is one of five choreographers in North America to receive a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She plans to use her $54,000 grant to develop a new work, "Skin(s)," that is co-commissioned by Intermedia Artsof Minneapolis and two California arts organizations.
"It deals with questions around how we in native urban communities, which are intertribal and interracial, perceive each other, looking beyond the color of our skin," Simas said. The work will get its local premiere at Intermedia Arts in 2016.
Two other Minnesotans are among the 175 artists,scholars and scientists named fellows for 2015. Timothy J. Kehoe, a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, will use his grant to study the impact of NAFTA and trade liberalization. Art historian Matthew P. Canepa, also a U of M professor, will do research on visual cultures in Persia and the ancient Iranian world.
