UCLA receives grant for dance/media project
UCLA has won a $1.49 million grant from the Pew Charitable
Trusts for the university’s National Dance/Media Project.
"We are honored to receive this significant grant, which enable
UCLA’s highly respected professionals in dance and multimedia to
provide the eduction environment needed to train leaders in
documenting America’s dance," Daniel Neuman, dean of UCLA’s School
of Arts and Architecture, said in a statement.
"The trusts’ selection of UCLA was based on the university’s
long tradition and commitment to excellence in dance education and
innovative programming," said Martin Godfrey, director of the
trusts’ culture program, in a statement.
The grant will help to fund the project, which is intended to
help the field of dance document itself in an age of developing
media.
"It is anticipated that at the end of this project the overall
field of dance, media and documentation will have been improved and
expanded," said Judy Mitoma, director and chair of the department
of world arts and cultures, in a statement.
Melnitz theater to be upgraded, renamed
The Bridges/Larson Foundation has donated $500,000 and the Cecil
B. De Mille Foundation has donated $75,000 to the School of
Theater, Film and Television.
The gifts are intended to turn Melnitz Theater into an advanced
film-screening venue, according to Dean Gilbert Cates.
In recognition of the larger gift, the theater will be renamed
in memory of actor and director James Bridges.
"Finally, we will have a theater that is fully suitable to the
quality of films we present," Cates said in a statement.
"There is unanimous celebration throughout the UCLA film
community that, at long last, we will be able to screen the entire
100-year history of cinema as it was meant to be seen," said Robert
Rosen, chair of the department of film and television and director
of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, in a statement.
Deceased professor’s daughter killed
Six months ago, Nini Lowrey wore a pink and white polka dot
dress to the funeral of her father, one of three professors shot to
death at San Diego State University.
On Saturday, it was the community’s turn to mourn her.
The 8-year-old and her friend were struck and killed by a car
last week as they headed to a playground.
About 2,000 mourners, many of them grade-schoolers, attended
services at Maranatha Chapel.
"Nini was a ray of sunshine in purple sneakers and pretty hair
ribbons. A tiny sprite with a megawatt smile," her grandparents
wrote in the program.
Mourners also paid tribute to Cynthia Chia Zhi, the 9-year-old
friend who died along with Nini on Feb. 16. The two girls were
thrown 40 feet into the air after they walked in front of car
during a Chinese New Year celebration in the city’s Rancho
Penasquitos neighborhood.
Nini died hours later at Children’s Hospital. Cynthia died the
next day.
At the service pictures of the two girls together were
displayed. One showed them together, walking on a balance beam.
Another picture showed her father giving Nini a bear hug.
D. Preston Lowrey III and fellow SDSU engineering professors
Chen Liang and Constantinos Lyrintzis were killed Aug. 15 when a
student allegedly opened fire during a defense of his master’s
thesis. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the former
SDSU student, 36-year-old Frederick Davidson.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.