Oakland, CA - Molissa Fenley, associate professor of dance at Mills College, has received a 2007–08 American Academy of Rome Prize. Her prestigious honor, entitled the Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, will provide Fenley with a stipend, a studio, room, and board for six months. She will begin residence at the Academy in February 2008.

The Rome Prize is awarded annually through an open competition juried by leading artists and scholars. Fellowship winners come to Rome to refine and expand their professional, artistic, or scholarly aptitudes, drawing on the substantial resources of their colleagues and the Italian capital, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

Fenley has taught at Mills since 1999. Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1954, she was raised in Nigeria and earned her degree in dance at Mills College in 1975. In 1977, she moved to New York City and formed Molissa Fenley and Dancers. She is known for choreographing and dancing physically demanding, high-energy solo and ensemble works.

Fenley's work has been presented throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, Indonesia, and Asia. Her 30-year career of choreographing and presenting her work has developed in cycles. During her first ten years (1977–1987), she focused on presenting group works performed by her and an ensemble of dancers. In the second ten years (1987–1997), her work shifted to solo performances created in collaboration with contemporary visual artists and composers. Now in her third cycle, she is again exploring the dynamics of ensemble work. Among Fenley's numerous awards are eight National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer Fellowships, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and grants from the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Greenwich Collection, Ltd., the Peter S. Reed Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the Merrill Foundation, the Harkness Foundations for Dance, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Heathcote Art Foundation, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and the Arts International Fund for U.S. Artists at Foreign Festivals.  

Established in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. It is situated on the Janiculum, the highest hill within the walls of Rome. Each year, the Rome Prize is awarded to a maximum of 30 emerging artists in architecture, landscape architecture, design, historic preservation and conservation, literature, musical composition, or visual arts, and scholars working in ancient, medieval, renaissance, early modern, or modern Italian studies.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs for undergraduate women, and graduate degree and certificate programs for women and men. Consistently recognized as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Mills currently ranks among the top 20 most diverse liberal arts colleges. The New York Times recently selected Mills as one of three leading California colleges for students to consider.

In 2006, the Washington Monthly College Rankings named Mills a leading liberal arts college based on community service, research spending, quality of preparation for graduate education, and social mobility. In addition, The Princeton Review’s annual guide, the Best 361 Colleges (2007) included Mills for the second year in a row among top U.S. institutions offering students an outstanding undergraduate education.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California on 135 lush acres, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women’s leadership, social responsibility, and creativity.

PRESS CONTACT:
Deborah Dallinger
Communications Consultant
925.788.9131