Alumni Entrepreneurial Grants

Each year, Boston Conservatory at Berklee awards its Alumni Entrepreneurial Grant to empower members of the alumni community to bring their creative visions to life. Since 2013, the program has supported a diverse array of impactful alumni projects in dance, music, and theater. This year’s awardees push the expressive boundaries of dance and musical theater, exploring themes of gender, identity, culture, and community. Here’s a look at the 2024 grant winners.

Esther Pauline Farley

Bodies of Water 2024 Season 

Esther Pauline Farley (BFA '21, contemporary dance) says that one of the greatest challenges in contemporary dance is navigating the industry’s tight-knit circles. In 2023, she established Bodies of Water, a Chicago-based dance collective and artists’ hub, to help foster a more inclusive, expansive community and create spaces for innovative performances, workshops, and collaborations. “The grant was instrumental in funding the second season,” she says. 

Farley’s grant covered essential expenses, venue rentals, costumes, and technical support for two major events. The first, in the fall of 2024, was Femme & Fatal, a semi-immersive dance theater performance examining gender equality, female representation in media, and the nuances of consent and boundaries within relationships, framed through the lens of Hollywood’s golden age. The second was Fluid Expressions, a festival featuring emerging performance and visual artists. “The grant ensured that I could fairly compensate the artists, fostering a supportive and sustainable environment,” says Farley. “It also helped us keep ticket prices accessible, allowing us to reach a broader audience and deepen our connection to the Chicago arts community.” 

Leah (Abbott) Misano

Welcome Home: RAMBLIN’ 

Inspired by the community surrounding American folk dance, Leah (Abbott) Misano (BFA '21, contemporary dance) applied her grant to a dance celebration of friendship, RAMBLIN’, with fellow alum Alex Meeth (BFA '22, contemporary dance). The grant funded a 10-day residency for the creation of this work, “allowing us to fully explore our ideas,” she explains. Misano is inspired by the blending of dance styles and art forms in contemporary dance. “Artists incorporate folk dance, martial arts, circus arts, theater, visual arts. It’s so exciting to see the beautifully different ideas and cultures come together,” she says. 

Misano and Meeth’s performance of RAMBLIN’ at Boston Moving Arts in October 2024 affirmed for Misano the immense power of collaboration. “Art is most profound when the audience connects to the work,” she says. “When I bring others into my creative process, it opens my mind and invites playfulness and fun.” Misano will spend 2025 in a Boston Moving Arts creative residency to explore her choreographic and creative practice. 

Zeniba Now  

The Thirst Trap

Inspiration can be a vampire: surprising, terrifying, and hungry—a fitting description of Zeniba Now’s (BFA '14, musical theater) creative process for The Thirst Trap, a campy, “very gay” concept for a B-movie musical about lesbian vampires running Hollywood. “The idea was born at an outrageous late-night songwriting session with my longtime cowriter Rodney Bush,” Now says. They expanded that song into a full plot and wrote additional songs. Now used her grant to produce and release “Poor Aurora,” the second single, with fellow alumni Taylor Shubert (associate alum, '13), Stephen Petrovich (BFA '10, musical theater), Teddy Roxpin, and others. 

Writing songs before a script may be unorthodox, but with five musicals under her belt, Now shrugs at creativity’s unpredictability. Turning The Thirst Trap into a movie musical and stage show is ambitious—low-budget films can start at $3 million. “It’s daunting,” she admits, but she and Bush remain driven to find collaborators to realize their comedic vision. Meanwhile, Now’s musical Take the Lead opens at Paper Mill Playhouse this spring, and she’s also developing a musical with Tom Kitt and Disney Theatrical, to be announced in 2025.

Learn more about Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Alumni Entrepreneurial Grant program.