The Bessies Announces Partnerships with Leading National
Dance Institutions to Provide New Professional Opportunities to
2019 Bessie Award Winners and Nominees
New York, NY, May 21, 2019 – The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, announces partnerships with Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and the American Dance Festival (ADF), and renews partnerships with the CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) and the New York State DanceForce, creating new platforms of support and professional opportunities for Bessie artists.
“The Bessies are excited to extend our work providing recognition and opportunities for outstanding dance makers in New York City via these partnerships,” said Bessies Executive Director Lucy Sexton. “Our ongoing collaborations with CUNY Dance Initiative and NYS DanceForce introduce Bessie artists to wider audiences across the city and the state, and the new opportunities offered by MANCC and ADF now put our award recipients and nominees in the national spotlight as well.”
Starting this coming season, one of the choreographers nominated for the 2019 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production will be offered a residency at MANCC, one of the leading dance facilities and movement research centers in the United States. Selected by members of the Bessies Selection Committee and a previous MANCC Residency Fellow, this mid-career artist will be invited to bring a group of dancers and other collaborators to MANCC for a residency of up to two-weeks to develop new work and to make use of the extensive state-of-the-art resources available at Florida State University, where MANCC is based.
Valuable new opportunities will also be available to the recipients of the Juried Bessie Award with a program created jointly by the Bessies and the American Dance Festival. The 2019 Juried Bessie Award winner will be invited to share work and process in the form of an open studio presentation with the ADF community during the renowned festival’s 2020 season. An ADF choreographer will serve on the Bessies Jury and will be present at the festival to introduce and help provide context for the artist’s work.
The Juried Bessie winner is selected by a group of three acclaimed choreographers that changes each year. In addition to the new collaboration with ADF, Juried Bessie Award winners receive touring and residency opportunities outside of New York City through the Bessies’ ongoing partnership with the New York State DanceForce, a statewide network of arts organizers and presenters, which will also continue this year.
All recipients of the 2019 Outstanding Production Bessie Award will continue to take advantage of
the partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative, a residency program for New York City dance makers on City University of New York (CUNY) campuses. The choreographers will be invited to teach master classes at CUNY colleges that are part of CDI and have formal academic dance programs: Queens College, Queensborough Community College, and Lehman College. CDI’s collaboration with the Bessies began last year, and 2018 Bessie recipients David Thomson and Nami Yamamoto shared their skills and knowledge with CUNY students.
ABOUT THE BESSIES
The NY Dance and Performance Awards have saluted outstanding and groundbreaking creative work in the dance field in New York City for 34 years. Known as “The Bessies” in honor of revered dance teacher Bessie Schönberg, the awards were established in 1984 by David R. White at Dance Theater Workshop. They recognize outstanding work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. Nominees are chosen by a selection committee comprised of artists, presenters, producers, and writers. All those working in the dance field are invited to join the NY Dance and Performance League as members and participate in annual discussions on the direction of the awards and nominate members to serve on the selection committee. For more information about The Bessies, visit www.bessies.org.
The 2018–2019 Bessie Awards Steering Committee, responsible for setting policy and providing oversight for the Bessie Awards throughout the year, is comprised of Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Jeanne Linnes, Stanford Makishi, Carla Peterson, Paz Tanjuaquio, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler.
The 2018–2019 Bessie Awards Selection Committee: Ronald Alexander, Elise Bernhardt, Charles Vincent Burwell, Diana Byer, Tymberly Canale, Alexis Convento, Parijat Desai, Maura Donohue, Boo Froebel, Angela Fatou Gittens, Diane Grumet, Brinda Guha, Joseph Hall, Mai Lê Hô, Iréne Hultman, Celia Ipiotis, Koosil-ja, Fernando Maneca, Lydia Mokdessi, Harold Norris, Craig Peterson, Doug Post, Rajika Puri, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Susan Reiter, Walter Rutledge, George Emilio Sanchez, Andrea Snyder, Sally Sommer, Risa Steinberg, Carrie Stern, Catherine Tharin, Tony Waag, and William Whitener.
ABOUT THE PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS
Throughout its 86-year history, the American Dance Festival (ADF) has been a nationally recognized leader in our indigenous art form of modern dance. Generations of dancers and choreographers have come to ADF as students, taught as faculty, and created and performed work as professional artists. Each summer, ADF has been the beating heart of the dance world. The best companies in the world premiere work on ADF’s stage, much of it commissioned by the festival. Over 25,000 people see performances by more than 30 companies each season. The festival has commissioned 427 works and premiered 689 pieces, including dances by Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Taylor. Each summer at ADF, more than 300 students from some 25 countries and 42 states study with ADF’s 50 faculty members. They come as kids in leotards with as many doubts as dreams. They leave as dancers and artists—and sometimes even new members of companies. Lives change in those five-and-a-half sweaty weeks. Beyond the summer, ADF maintains year-round dance studios offering movement classes to over 650 participants, provides over 180 free classes to almost 4,000 local dancers, and offers choreographic residencies providing artists with the necessary space and time to create. www.americandancefestival.org
The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) is an unprecedented model for collaboration between the City University of New York (CUNY)—the nation’s largest public urban university system—and the NYC dance field. A residency program that opens the doors of CUNY campuses to professional choreographers and dance companies, CDI supports local artists, enhances the cultural life and education of college students, and builds new dance audiences at CUNY performing arts centers. CDI was developed directly in response to the shortage of affordable space for dance in NYC, and since its official launch in 2014, the program has subsidized and facilitated a total of 115 residencies—from emerging choreographers to established dance companies—at 13 CUNY colleges in all five boroughs. CDI is spearheaded and administered by The Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College. www.cuny.edu/danceinitiative
Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) is recognized as a major leader in the national field of dance and performance for its generative support of the creative process as innovative artists develop new work within a major research university, Florida State University (FSU). As one of the only centers of its kind in the U.S., MANCC provides artists in residence with critical resources, including 24/7 access to extensive state-of-the-art dance, production, and conditioning facilities within the School of Dance, major libraries, scholars and scholarship in alignment with their research needs, and documentation.
At the close of its fifteenth year (June 2019), MANCC will have hosted over 170 regionally and nationally significant artists in residencies with over 1,000 collaborators (dancers, performers, composers, musicians, designers, dramaturgs, writers, etc.). As a creative incubator, MANCC supports the development of a wide range of dance/performance works by U.S.-based artists by considering a diversity of practices, identities, and geographies that can often push the edges of the form(s) into new territories. Residencies can be early, mid-, or late-stage just prior to premiere, or pure research without final product in mind. www.mancc.org
The New York State DanceForce, established in 1994, is a consortium of 19 dance activists across the state working in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts to increase dance activity beyond the five boroughs of NYC. Every year, its members create exciting and innovative projects in their communities to help move work to new regions and to knit together dance communities from around the state. These projects, for which the DanceForce provides core funding, include creative or teaching residencies, where an artist from outside the region will spend several days or weeks in a community rehearsing, giving classes and workshops, and performing; audience education and development projects, including targeted marketing and joint marketing initiatives to raise dance’s visibility and intensive outreach with youth groups and the community at large; networking initiatives, where multiple arts organizations will work together to use their collective resources to better support dance activity in their area; and projects that link local communities with artists and companies from other regions. www.danceforce.org
Press contacts:
Janet Stapleton – 212-633-0016 / stapleton.janet@gmail.com
Kamila Slawinski – 347-534-6029 / kamila@kamilaslawinski.com
Follow The Bessies on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: #theBessies / @bessieawards