Outstanding Production:
Kimberly Bartosik
through the mirror of their eyes
New York Live Arts
For an uncanny ability to combine the psychological, emotional and embodied experience of the everyday with technical expertise into a poetic whole, bridging generations, time, and place.
Monica Bill Barnes and Robert Saenz de Viteri
Days Go By
Brookfield Place New York
For seamlessly showing us, through humor and movement, that the culture of a mall can provide insight into humanity within a truly immersive site-specific experience.
Brother(hood) Dance!
Afro/Solo/Man
Gibney
For bringing socio-political and environmental injustices to the forefront with sensitivity and care for the subject matter, the community, the audience, and the artists.
Ayodele Casel and Arturo O’Farrill
Ayodele Casel + Arturo O’Farrill
The Joyce Theater
For an exhilarating, heartfelt collaboration melding Afro-Latin rhythms with tap, song, and spoken word; a story told with historical relevance and a message of empowerment for women of color. For a sensitive, authentic and honest performance that brought tears of joyful recognition; a tribute to this art form, to this partnership, and to a superlative dance artist.
a canary torsi/Yanira Castro
Last Audience
New York Live Arts
For bringing humanity and vulnerability to a trailblazing performance. For the courage to empower audiences to make their own work within the framework of a collective creation. For conjuring five unique experiences and gifting the audience with a pre-show meal.
Yoshiko Chuma
My Diary: Secret Journey to Tipping Utopia
The Invisible Dog
For inhabiting space, and intuiting history and mystery through multiple dimensions. For deploying performers in unexpected ways, surprising themselves and the audiences. For an encounter that becomes an adventure in movement, sound, and video, with a soul.
Colin Dunne in collaboration with Sinéad Rushe and Mel Mericer
Concert
Baryshnikov Arts Center
For creating and performing an intimate, playful, virtuosic and mature multi-media work that reflects both tradition and exploration through a contemporary lens. For delivering masterful choreography, while staying true to the rhythms and movement of Irish dance, a complex genre that embraces both music and dance, with a deep history in both Ireland and the U.S.
Gregory Vuyani Maqoma
Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero
The Joyce Theater
For an eloquent, hauntingly powerful, and deeply personal exploration of loss and violence that masterfully integrates dancers and singers in a unique and memorable production for the Prototype Festival.
Annie-B Parson
David Byrne’s American Utopia
Hudson Theatre
For seamlessly combining dance, music, and the spoken word within an arresting visual and aural environment. For creating essential movement and spatial patterns that generate euphoria and surprise. For elevating the work of collaborators and fellow artists.
jumatatu m. poe and Jermone “Donte” Beacham
Let ‘im Move You: This Is a Formation
Abrons Art Center
For a work of rigorous beauty and deep joy created by a seemingly untiring team of artists. For a sense of wonder that lasted from the gallery into the theater and throughout the performance, continuing until the audience trailed the artists out of the building.
Amanda Szeglowski
this is now, and now, and now.
JACK
For her nuanced and perceptive “ode to aging,” performed with crystalline beauty by an intergenerational ensemble of women. For a sharp, humorous work that captures the longing, competition, desires and friendships of growing-up female in 1980’s America through precision team-dancing and striking musicality.
Outstanding “Breakout” Choreographer:
Gemma Bond
For fearless risk-taking, creating new and witty ways to move in both abstract and narrative works, drawing on the classical ballet vocabulary. For fusing music to movement in a distinctive voice that places human emotions and relationships in the foreground.
Tess Dworman
For creating an exquisitely crafted, bold work of dance theater filled with humor, surprising reveals, and a glimpse into the radical methods of bodily practice used to coax and allow art to emerge through an unreliable narrator with a fierce commitment to waiting — for joy, for presence, and for truth.
It’s Showtime NYC!
For embodying through movement the kaleidoscopic cultures and pulsing energy of New York City. For sharing the dynamic world of underground street dance on sidewalks, subways, and stages.
Gabrielle Revlock
For portraying the deep nuances of the “embrace” in an intimate duet, sourcing movement from video, and repurposing it for a duet of immense tenderness. For celebrating the nourishing relationships in female friendship in a work both healing and moving.
Special Citation:
Jacqulyn Buglisi
For Table of Silence
For an extraordinary ceremonial event originating on the Plaza at Lincoln Center, annually paying homage to 9/11 and the solemnity of the day. For a decade of performances, with a cast of 150+ dancers, Buddhist monks in prayer, vocalists, drummers and musicians representing the diversity and soul of the NYC dance community. For a moving meditation that transcends the day, putting out a call to action for unity and peace in the world.
Service to the Field of Dance:
Ishmael Houston-Jones
For a life in dance and performance that has demanded change, asked the hard questions, and created space and spaces for his fellow artists and students. For embracing resilience, invoking a lifelong conversation of provocation and love. For a clarity of consciousness that always sought justice and openings.
Peter Richards
For a life devoted to documenting the art of dance and performance artists. For over 30 years, with Character Generators, then independently, serving as one of the main historical “eyes” of our generation.
Harkness Center for Dance Injuries
For offering thirty years of ground-breaking attention to dancers, providing access to medical services regardless of their ability to pay. For serving more than 14,000 dancers each year, taking care of injuries and restoring health. For developing an extensive staff of doctors and physical therapists specializing in dance-generated injuries, leading research in dance medicine, and creating educational programs for caretakers of the future.
Shannon Hummel
For her dedication to providing “dance for all“ to the Red Hook, Brooklyn community through the organization Cora Dance, founded in 1998. For offering a “pay-what-you-can” program, committed to excellence, equity and community integration, providing child pick-up services, meals, homework help, and dancewear for students, working parents, and children.
Outstanding Visual Design:
Peter Born (Set and Lighting Design)
For Sitting on a Man’s Head by Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born
Danspace Project
For an awe-inducing fabric installation, a marvel from within and without, which transformed the sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church. Born’s majestic enclosure swayed and glowed continuously for four hours. His installation offered a gentle and singular space within which to breathe, sing, and walk with over 30 artists and hundreds from the public who joined them.
Liam O’Brien & Kelly Hanson (Costume and Scenic Design), Mary Ellen Stebbins and Jane Cox (Lighting Design)
For Days Go By by Monica Bill Barnes and Robert Saenz de Viteri
Brookfield Place New York
For expertly combining technical elements in lighting, sound, and costumes for a site-specific piece in a mall, creating a truly immersive experience for the audience.
Ricarrdo Valentine and Orlando Zane Hunter (Video)
For Afro/Solo/Man by Brother(hood) Dance!
Gibney
For painting dance narratives on “many canvases,” leading audience members on journeys far beyond the upstage wall. For providing natural-seeming textures for the numerous landscapes that hold these rich stories. For strategically maneuvering smooth transitions between scenes with a multitude of props, an array of gripping digital projections, and impactful lighting designs eloquently enhancing the presentation by highlighting the dancers’ bodies.
Tim Yip (Visual Director and Set) and Beili Liu (Installation)
For Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance
David H. Koch Theater
For an extraordinary collection of design elements deployed to underscore the drama of the story, from the massive amount of red feathers representing blood to the thousands of scissors hanging precariously above the extraordinary dancers in magnificent costumes.
Outstanding Revived Work:
BUSK
By Aszure Barton
Performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
New York City Center
For combining the fragility, tenderness, and resilience that exist within the human experience. For engaging the dancers in layered and intricate choreographic structures that give way to the nuance of each individual as the complex layering of movement reveals the inherent wisdom of the body.
Colored
By Kyle Marshall
BAM Fisher
For creating an epic and layered portrayal of a twisted spectrum of Blackness with a trio of exquisite dancers, who together perform stereotypes and spectacle, appropriation and appreciation, reclaiming and loving these into the real as they navigate the tangled beauty of Blackness.
From The Horse’s Mouth, various works
By Tina Croll & Jamie Cunningham/From the Horse’s Mouth honoring the 75th anniversary of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division
The Theater at the 14th Street Y
For intimate narratives told by a broad swath of members of the international dance community. For delivering passionate and personal stories juxtaposed over a perfected and abstract format of improvisation, music and dance.
Monuments: Echoes in the Dance Archive
By Adam Weinert
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
For an evening that resurrected works by Ted Shawn, Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman, giving space to the original movements and reconstructions, and for providing a deep understanding of the context within which these works originated.
Outstanding Performer:
Oluwadamilare Ayorinde
In A.D. and Colored by Kyle Marshall
BAM Fisher
For his ability to expand the choreographer’s vision with relaxed, elegant movement and passionate, emotional commitment to every moment in the work of multiple choreographers, particularly Kyle Marshall.
Grupo de Rua
In Inoah by Bruno Beltraõ/Grupo de Rua
Brooklyn Academy of Music
For an ensemble of ten who become one body of constant force and dynamism, propelled in a plea for freedom. For an amazing ability to keep their weight close to the ground, needing no preparation, yet never crashing; for causing a rift to darkness and awakening the Will to Power in a dance of quiet riot.
Burr Johnson
In through the mirror of their eyes by Kimberly Bartosik
New York Live Arts
For extraordinary technical ability, coupled with deep emotional expression and generous commitment. For bridging and expanding boundaries that transcend the performance experience for the audience in the work of numerous choreographers, especially his recent work with Kimberly Bartosik.
Wataru Kitao
In The Unknown Dancer in the Neighborhood by Suguru Yamamoto
The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival 2020 & Japan Society
For a performer who brings both beautifully executed movement and vivid characters to the stage, breathing life and exquisite physicality into the many residents of one neighborhood.
Huwer Anthony Marche Jr. (“King Havoc”)
In LayeRhythm Jam
Nublu
For acutely tuning into a sonic, visual, emotional, physical, and energetic environment with raw honesty, powerful storytelling, creative technique and deep generosity in his improvisational flexing.
Shannon Nash
In Community Exercises for Sanctuary Spaces by Brendan Drake
The Brick
For showing full command of technique and line while combining text, humor, and personal presence with outright abandon and unrelenting power.
Emily Pope
In My Diary: Secret Journey to Tipping Utopia by Yoshiko Chuma
The Invisible Dog
For translucent, technical purity, an ability to quietly yet radiantly shine in an ensemble of dancers. For an enduring and sustained commitment. For inhabiting the inner strength of the choreographer’s vision.
Annique Roberts
For Sustained Achievement in the work of Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE
For the steadfast, quiet strength, and self assurance that belies her small frame, a unique force in the dance world shining in the repertory of Ronald K. Brown, in work as varied as ‘Ife/My Heart, Grace, and Gatekeepers.
Myssi Robinson
For Body of Work in the Work of Kyle Marshall
For boldly tearing up the stage with her brilliant, full-bodied, powerful sense of self as embodied in the work of Kyle Marshall.
Bijayini Satpathy
In Kalpana – the world of Imagination by Kelucharan Mohapatra and Surupa Sen
Presented by Drive East Festival at A.R.T. New York Theatre
For astounding viewers with luminous and exquisite mastery over her body and the rhythms and melodies of the form. For bringing alive a range of characters — precocious child, exasperated mother, adored, divine lover, and legendary animals — with the full force of her imagination.
Hu Shenyuan
In Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance
David H. Koch Theater
For embodying femininity in a spiritual and sensual unity of silky suppleness and exquisite articulation in a very Chinese, yet universal, way of moving, in his superb cross-gender role as the concubine.
Omari Wiles
In Odeon by Ephrat Asherie
The Joyce Theater
For bringing the striking clarity, sinuous arms, and sharp hips of his trademark “AfrikFusion” style, fusing traditional African dance, Afrobeat, Vogue, House dance and ballet to the street dance mix of Odeon.
Outstanding Sound Design / Musical Composition:
Quran Karriem
For Soundz at the Back of My Head by Thomas F. DeFrantz/Slippage
Gibney
For creating sounds based on concepts of sensory movement that are imagined as lingering thoughts. For a wide range of sound experiences based on the narrator’s momentary positioning as a symbol of embodied storytelling and reflections.
Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Ntuthuko Mbuyazi
For Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero by Gregory Maqoma/Vuyani Dance Theater
The Joyce Theater
For melding a magnificent and masterful combination of voices, instruments, and rhythms that perfectly matched the range of dynamic choreography that told the compelling story of Cion: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero.
Stephan Moore
For Last Audience by a canary torsi/Yanira Castro
New York Live Arts
For providing the tools and guidance, yet letting go of control in an authentic and unconventional approach to sound.
Nioka Workman, nia love, and Antoine Roney
For g1(host):lostatsea by nia love
Gibney
For a delicately powerful musical performance carrying the movement forward beat by beat while riding on a flowing acoustic life of its own in nia love’s aquatic dance world.
Lifetime Achievement:
Louis Johnson
For breaking color barriers with the ease of a skilled magician, for amazing charisma and for spreading joy and love everywhere. For breaking ground as the first African American to study at the School of American Ballet and appearing in an all-white film of Damn Yankees, going on to choreograph The Wiz and Purlie, and mentoring generations of dancers at Henry Street Settlement and around the world. For instilling in all an undeniable optimism, humanity and unrivaled desire to encourage everyone to be their very best. Honored posthumously.
Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez
For being masterful artists. For transforming the South Bronx and New York City dance and performance by creating the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. For providing an artistic home for women, Latinx, People of Color, Indigenous folx, and the LGBTQ community and for placing these artists, their communities and their arts-making front and center.
Mary Overlie
For her wild, anarchic spirit, commitment to experimentation, profound influence as a teacher, choreographer, and co-founder of Movement Research, Danspace Project, and NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing, as well as her creation and articulation of The Six Viewpoints, forever changing performance through her work. Honored posthumously.