2025 Bessie wards
Lifetime Achievement in Dance
Garth Fagan
The generator of a thrillingly distinctive choreographic style, Garth Fagan’s artistry manifests humanity. His technique threads jazz’s polyrhythms through the specificities of Afro-Caribbean, modern dance and ballet forms. Founding a world class dance company — Garth Fagan Dance in Rochester, NY — Fagan mined the native talent forming an ensemble of incomparably kinetic dancers. Able to suspend themselves in eternal balances and levitate without preparation, the elite dancers reveal the intricacy of Fagan’s mind, ultimately inspiring him for over 5 1/2 decades. Fagan’s choreography astonishes audiences from the groundbreaking Griot NY created in collaboration with Wynton Marsalis, to Julie Taymor’s “Lion King,” ballets for Dance Theater of Harlem, NYC Ballet and countless concert halls all over the world. Garth Fagan is a man of uncompromising values and artistic integrity.
*Photo by Matt Wittmeyer
Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance
Gibney Dance
Gibney Dance is recognized for its long-standing commitment to providing essential infrastructure, resources, and leadership in support of artists and the broader dance field. Through its consistent dedication to access, equity, and artist well-being, Gibney has strengthened the conditions necessary for creative practice, dialogue, and exchange.
In the tradition of the BESSIE Awards, which acknowledge not only artistic excellence but lasting contribution to the field, Gibney Dance exemplifies service rooted in responsibility, care, and continuity. Its work has supported generations of artists and institutions, contributing to a more resilient and inclusive dance ecosystem.
*Photo: Courtesy of Gibney
Outstanding Visual Design
Clifton Taylor
for Many Angels for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
at New York City Center
An emissary of light and shadow, commanding color with rare authority. Luminous and precise, a world built for dancers to inhabit, and for audiences to remember. Your transcendent manipulation of photons lets us see things as they could be, inviting us to bask in a warm embrace in Lar Lubovitch’s Many Angels for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at City Center.
Outstanding Sound Design or Musical Composition
Angie Pittman, Cody Jensen
for Black Life Chord Changes at Out-Front! Festival
at BAM Fisher Hillman Studio
A rigorous, transporting aural world that holds the audience with care while carving a brave space for Black Life Chord Changes at the Pioneers Go East Collective’s Out Front! Festival at BAM.
Outstanding Revival
Grace (1999)
Ronald K. Brown
for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
at New York City Center
For a work that returns not as nostalgia but as necessity, Ronald K. Brown’s Grace revives the stage as a site of deliverance where modern dance and West African lineage braid into a communal ritual of radiance, mercy, and forward motion. Performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center, this collective prayer is precise, ecstatic, and fiercely human, carrying dancers through joy, struggle, and release with undiminished power and heightened relevance.
Outstanding Performer
Jacquelin Harris
for Many Angels, Lar Lubovitch for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
at New York City Center
With quiet authority and crystal-clear intention, she honored the continuing legacy of Ailey’s leading women bringing celestial clarity to the terrestrial stage in Lar Lubovitch’s Many Angels for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center.
Cast of CATS: The Jellicle Ball
at Perelman Performing Arts Center
For a felicitous requiem of movement and motivation serving the body politic with prrr prrr vibes and regimented performances juxtaposed with unmatched fabulosity in Cats: The Jellicle Ball at PAC NYC. Where disciplined bodies in radiant revolt, make community look inevitable.
Cast: André De Shields, Baby Byrne, Bebe Nicole Simpson, Bryce Farris, Capital Kaos, Dava Huesca, Dudney Joseph Jr., Emma Sofia, Garnet Williams, Ivy Mugler, Jenny Mollet, Jonathan Burke, Jovan E’Sean, Junior LaBeija, Kai B. White, Kendall Grayson Stroud, Nora Schell, Phumzile Sojola, Primo, Robert “Silk” Mason, Rodrick Covington, Sydney James Harcourt, Tara Lashan Clinkscales, Teddy Wilson Jr., “Tempress” Chasity Moore, Xavier Reyes, Zachary A. Myers.
Jake Roxander
for Onegin for American Ballet Theatre at Metropolitan Opera House
at Lincoln Center
Dancing measured, controlled, and alive with meaning pulling us into Lensky’s inner life with his performance of John Cranko’s Onegin, performed by American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House. With unmistakable urgency and musical intelligence, he met each moment with care and courage.
House of Juicy + House of Telfar,Performance as a House,
Draw inspiration from one of Alvin Ailey’s iconic dance pieces
at The Whitney Museum
A sermon of movement that honored Ballroom Culture, Modern Dance, and new futures in mo-tion, carrying forward the stories of the marginalized, and those who live unapologetically at the Whitney Museum for the Ailey Ball.
House of Juicy Couture – Alexis Wan, Jayden Benbow, Tyreel Simpson, Baby Byrne, Mateo Roska, Nicholas Sterling, Shaquill Blanding, Veyonce Deleon, Tyrone Reese.
House of Telfar – Dava Huesca, Bryce Farris, Omarion Burke, Xavier Villafañe, Travon Williams, Myles Porter.
Outstanding Breakout Choreographer
Amy Hall Garner
With her deep Southern lineage, muscular musicality and verve, she spins bodies into bonfires of joy, perseverance, and familial warmth at the core. Through bold commissions across the dance community, she proves how invention and imagination cultivates form.
Outstanding Choreographer/Creator
Fredrick Earl Mosley
for Unleashed
at Ailey Citigroup Theater
For his enduring commitment to creating dance works and performances, and for fostering cross-generational mentorship and meaningful community through his Hearts of Men series—expanding visibility, possibility, and legacy within the field.
Lar Lubovitch
for Many Angels
at New York City Center
For a choreography steeped in yūgen the quiet, inexhaustible depth of what can only be suggested, this work turns an old paradox (“how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”) into a living mystery. With restraint as virtuosity, Lar Lubovitch’s Many Angels performed by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center makes the smallest space feel infinite, letting absence, silence, and precision summon the unseen.
Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons
for CATS: The Jellicle Ball
at Perelman Performing Arts Center
For an unmatched synthesis of Ballroom Culture and Musical-Theater mayhem, storytelling included, Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles conjure a new way of being in CATS: The Jellicle Ball at PAC NYC. With feline personas as their runway mythology, they blend soft and dramatic vogue with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, whipping and dipping it into an unlikely, irresistible potion.
Yoko Murakami
for Blink
at Triskelion Arts
For an imaginative and exquisite use of movement and visuals that draws viewers into another dimension, exploring the body’s existence through light, shadow, and the manipulation of perception—inviting us into a dreamlike state where time and space blend.