LEIMERT PARK : Music-Dance Project Gets $4,500 Grant

Two local artists have received a $4,500 grant to complete their multimedia interpretation of the late artist Romare Beardon’s collage art.

Choreographer Pat Taylor and composer Mark Shelby of Leimert Park worked for about a year on “The Art of Jazz--’Romare,’ ” a music-dance collaboration of Beardon’s multilayered artwork. Beardon died in 1988.

The grant, administered by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, will allow the artists to finish the project in time to perform it by Black History Month, next February.

“The LACE grant is giving us money to give musicians stipends, pay for props--whatever we need,” said Taylor.

Taylor’s six-member dance company, Jazzantiqua, will perform the piece with Black Note, Shelby’s jazz quartet. The two groups performed an excerpt from the piece two months ago at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood.

Taylor hopes to translate Beardon’s cerebral collages into a more accessible format without sacrificing the essence of his work:

“I was fascinated by his collage method. His collage relationships are similar to jazz in the sense of improvisation. We are trying to make that accessible to a large number of people.”

The artists also plan to incorporate poetry by Langston Hughes into the piece.

The project was one of seven chosen by LACE from more than 150 applicants. The grant is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.