Overview
The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) Performing Arts Division’s (PERF) EMPOWERMENT project returns for its third year. Profiling women who have impacted and redefined the human experience, EMPOWERMENT is a festival-style weekend of performances, social action, creative workshops, and documentary screenings. In 2025, EMPOWERMENT will honor the work of Academy Award winning Costume Designer Edith Head and Grammy Award winning Vocal Artist Etta James. Both American born and rooted professionally in Los Angeles, Edith Head is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in the film industry; Etta James, an American singer/songwriter famous for her deep and earthy voice, bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is considered to be one of the greatest voices of her century.
EMPOWERMENT: Edith + Etta presents three days of arts activities at DCA’s Lankershim Arts Center, located in the heart of the NoHo Arts District at: 5108 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood, CA 91601. All events are free and open to the public.
A demonstration of DCA|PERF’s commitment to investing in local creative communities and individual artists, the City invites emerging artists focused on dance, spoken word, fashion, and/or fashion and costume design to apply for the opportunity to create new work as part of the EMPOWERMENT: Edith + Etta commission project. Funded through DCA’s Lankershim Program Fund (LPF), the artists will ignite the stage with electrifying performances inspired by the work of Edith Head and Etta James.
The successfully commissioned artists will create and produce an original dance, spoken word, or a fusion of dance and spoken word three to five minutes in length with special attention to costuming. The proposed work must be inspired by Edith Head and/or Etta James through expression, theme, and/or motif. Applicants will be required to create and produce a live performance piece that is appropriate for the general public and supports the concept of free arts for all.
Selected by peer-panel-review, ten commissions will be awarded to emerging artists in the amount of $2,500 each to facilitate the production costs of developing the piece and can include any of the following: choreography, videography, collaborators, permitting, music rights, and other costs related to the creation of the original work. Because of the special emphasis on fashion this year, an additional budget of up to $500 will be available for costuming. Awards may take up to six months after the presentation to have payment disbursed.
The deadline to apply is Sunday, January 5, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. Submit applications via email to dca-lankershimtheatre@lacity.org with “EMPOWERMENT 2025” as the subject line. If you have questions or have trouble submitting your application, please contact us at (818) 301-6120 prior to the deadline. Operational hours are Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
ELGIBILITY
Applicants must be a professional performing artist; heritage-based practitioners and culture keepers; performing arts educator; and/or creator that in engaged in diverse commercial, non-profit, and independent practices, inclusive of classical, traditional and contemporary forms. Professional artists who create meaningful contributions to the field, community, and performing arts ecosystem; are essential to the field; produce cultural content for the audiences of LA County; and/ or maintain knowledge and expertise of their discipline.
Applicants must be emerging performing artists of any age. An emerging artist is a creative person whose work is starting to gain recognition in the art world. They are often at the beginning of their career, regardless of age, and may still be in performing arts school/college or have recently graduated. Emerging artists are working hard to build their portfolio, establish their name, and refine their craft. They may not have created a large body of work or exhibited at many performance spaces yet.
Applicants must live or work within Los Angeles County. Bonus points are given in the peer-review-panel scoring process for those who live or work within the geographic boundaries of Council Districts 2. Visit neighborhoodinfo.lacity.gov (link will open a new browser tab), enter your physical street address in the search field, and click on “FIND.” In your search result, you should see your City Council District number and the LA City Councilmember’s name listed under Elected Officials. Applicants must have a social security number.
We encourage those who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA2s+, physically challenged and neurologically diverse to apply.
ABOUT EDITH HEAD
Edith Claire Head (October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design between 1949 and 1973, making her the most awarded woman in the Academy’s history. Head is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.
Born and raised in California, Head started her career as a Spanish teacher, but was interested in design. After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures in 1923. She won acclaim for her design of Dorothy Lamour’s trademark sarong in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, and became a household name after the Academy Award for Best Costume Design was created in 1948. Head was considered exceptional for her close working relationships with her subjects, with whom she consulted extensively; these included virtually every top female star in Hollywood. Head’s clothed fashion icon Audrey Hepburn in numerous pictures including Roman Holiday and Sabrina, as well as cultural legend Bette Davis in the quintessential All About Eve. Head’s film designs impacted the fashion and styles of the day, changing garments, silhouettes and fabrics for men and women across the world.
Head worked at Paramount for 44 years. In 1967, the company declined to renew her contract, and she was invited by Alfred Hitchcock to join Universal Pictures. There she earned her eighth and final Academy Award for her work on The Sting in 1973. Her 35 Oscar nominations and eight awards make her both the most honored costume designer and woman in Academy Award history to date. In addition to her film work, Head designed costumes for two Broadway shows in 1958, and television shows until 1979. Head’s final movie was the Steve Martin comedy, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, which found the costume designer parodying her own work from the film noir period three decades earlier.
Edith Head’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which she received in 1974, is located at 6504 Hollywood Boulevard. As a lasting tribute, the character “Edna Mode” in Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) was modeled on Edith Head.
ABOUT ETTA JAMES
Jamesetta Hawkins (January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012), known professionally as Etta James, was an American singer and songwriter who performed in various genres. James possessed the vocal range of a contralto. Her musical style changed during the course of her career. At the beginning of her recording career, in the mid-1950s, James was marketed as an R&B and doo-wop singer. After signing with Chess Records in 1960, James broke through as a traditional pop-styled singer, covering jazz and pop music standards on her debut album, At Last! James’s voice deepened and coarsened, moving her musical style in her later years into the genres of soul and jazz.
Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as “The Wallflower”, “At Last”, “Tell Mama”, “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”, and “I’d Rather Go Blind”. She faced a number of personal problems, including heroin addiction, severe physical abuse, and incarceration, before making a musical comeback in the late 1980s with the album Seven Year Itch.
James was once considered one of the most overlooked blues and R&B musicians in the music history of the United States. It was not until the early 1990s, when she began receiving major industry awards from the Grammys and the Blues Foundation, that she received wide recognition. In more recent years, she has been hailed as a pioneer who helped bridge the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll and thereby contributed significantly to American musical history. James has influenced a wide variety of musicians, including, notably, Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera, Janis Joplin, Brandy, Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, Beth Hart, Hayley Williams of Paramore and Brent Smith of Shinedown as well as British artists The Rolling Stones, Elkie Brooks, Paloma Faith, Joss Stone, Rita Ora, Amy Winehouse, and Adele, and the Belgian singer Dani Klein.
James’s deep and earthy voice bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. She won three Grammy Awards for her albums (2005 – Best Traditional Blues Album for Blues to the Bone; 2004 – Best Contemporary Blues Album for Let’s Roll; and 1995 – Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday) and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001.[3] She also received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2003. Rolling Stone magazine ranked James number 22 on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time; she was also ranked number 62 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Billboard’s 2015 list of “The 35 Greatest R&B Artists Of All Time” also included James, whose “gutsy, take-no-prisoner vocals colorfully interpreted everything from blues and R&B/soul to rock n’roll, jazz and gospel.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame called hers “one of the greatest voices of her century” and says she is “forever the matriarch of blues.”