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Bessie Awards

Award for contemporary dance

Summary

Award for contemporary dance

The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, performance, music composition and visual design. The Bessie Awards were established in 1983.

History and description

The Bessie Awards were established in 1983 by Dance Theater Workshop and named in honor of Bessie Schonberg, an influential mid-20th-century teacher of modern dance and former head of the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College. The awards honor exceptional choreography, performance, music composition and visual design in dance and allied art forms.

Since 2010, the awards have been overseen by an independent steering committee in partnership with Dance/NYC and administered by Lucy Sexton. In their current iteration, the awards encompass a broader range of dance genres and supporting art forms than in the past, and offer an annual commission to an emerging artist.

Recipients

Over 400 Bessie Awards have been presented since their founding. Notable recipients include:

Choreographers

Arthur Aviles
LaTasha Barnes
Jérôme Bel
Beverly Schmidt Blossom
Camille A. Brown
Trisha Brown
Donald Byrd
Ann Carlson
Ping Chong
Yoshiko Chuma
Leslie Cuyjet
Garth Fagan
Molissa Fenley
William Forsythe
Beth Gill
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Joe Goode
David Gordon
Bill Irwin
Bill T. Jones
Lisa Jones
Carl Hancock Rux
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker
Alonzo King
Stephan Koplowitz
Édouard Lock
Meredith Monk
Mark Morris
Tere O'Connor
Stephen Petronio
Inbal Pinto
Joya Powell
Angelin Preljocaj
David Roussève
Pam Tanowitz
Raúl Tamez
Saburo Teshigawara
Muna Tseng
Doug Varone
Johanna Boyce
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Robert Wilson
Christopher Williams
Mariana Valencia
Wim Vandekeybus

Composers

David Byrne
James Baker
Anthony Davis
Peter Laurence Gordon
Julius Hemphill
Lenny Pickett
Dan Siegler
Hahn Rowe
David Van Tieghem

Designers

Charles Atlas
Powers Boothe
Kyle Chepulis
Beverly Emmons
David Ferri
Kathryn Kaufmann
Peter Ksander
Mark Lancaster
Susanne Poulin
Stan Pressner
Philip Sandström
Howard S. Thies
Jennifer Tipton
Philip Trevino
Casper Stracke & Benton C Bainbridge

An archive of past recipients is available at the Bessies web site.

References

(20 August 1984). "'Bessies' to Be Awarded Sept. 13 for Achievement in Dance". New York Times.
Kourlas, Gia. (10 September 2010). "Bessies Are Back After a Hiatus, Primed for a Major Makeover". [[The New York Times]].
"About the Bessies".
Kourlas, Gia. (10 August 2012). "Classifications in the Science of an Art". [[The New York Times]].
Thompson, Candice. (16 November 2023). "LaTasha Barnes looks for the roots linking Black dance styles".
(December 17, 2022). "At Bessie Awards, Joy and Diversity, and Gathering in Person".
Anderson, Jack. (27 September 1999). "Dance and Performance Art Awards". The New York Times.
"Award Archive".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

american-dance-awards dance-in-new-york-city bessie-award-winners awards-established-in-1983 1983-establishments-in-new-york-city

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