5 Alpert Award winners announced

Los Angeles photographer Catherine Opie, Philadelphia hip-hop dancer and choreographer Rennie Harris, and New York-based jazz pianist, composer and improviser Vijay Iyer are among the winners of this year’s Alpert Awards in the Arts.

Also on the list are Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Coco Fusco and playwright, poet and performer Carl Hancock Rux, also of Brooklyn.

Established in 1994, the annual Alpert Awards, sponsored by CalArts and the Herb Alpert Foundation, provide $50,000 fellowships to midcareer artists in dance, film/video, music, theater and the visual arts.

The disciplines correspond to five of the six schools at CalArts, and each fellowship includes a weeklong residency at CalArts in the next academic year.

Two of the winners reached Tuesday confirmed that the awards, decided by peer review panels, would fulfill their goal of giving artists a financial boost as they refine their careers.

Opie, 42, is a 1988 CalArts graduate. She said Tuesday that she would use some of the funds for new photo projects, including a series called “Surfers,” which will be seen in L.A., New York and London next year. Opie added that the award also would fund “the next city, Chicago,” in her ongoing examination of American cities. So far she has photographed L.A., St. Louis, New York and Minneapolis; after Chicago comes Pittsburgh. And, she adds that she will purchase “some new stuff for my studio; I just built new studios this year and spent every single bit of money I had on that, and now I’ll have a cushion again.”

Reached at his Brooklyn home, writer Rux said he felt “incredibly honored,” and said he would use some of the money to update his home office. It also will support his work, exploring favorite topics: architecture, family and the drama of mythology. He added that today’s highly commercial Broadway and off-Broadway theater scene has become daunting to writers such as himself who are left of mainstream.

“I don’t know that all of the writers that I hang out with necessarily think of theater as an option,” he said.

Dancer-choreographer Harris, 39, was unavailable for comment. He performs tonight through Sunday at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse in his new evening-length work, “Facing Mekka,” along with members of his company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, and other dancers.

An awards dinner will be May 31 in New York.