The evening included performances by Flex star Storyboard P, recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, choreographer/dancer and 2014 Bessie winner Camille A. Brown, and improviser/dance-maker and 1987 Bessie recipient Lisa Nelson.

Nancy Stark Smith, dancer, teacher, and cofounder of Contact Quarterly, presented Steve Paxton with the 2015 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance. Ella Baff, Senior Program Manager for Arts and Cultural Heritage, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Sam Miller, President, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Jan Schmidt, former Curator, The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented Movement Research with the 2015 Bessie for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. Other presenters included Kyle Abraham, Ivy Baldwin, Ping Chong, Robin Dunn, Marcelo Gomes, Rennie Harris, Cynthia Hopkins, Jennifer Monson, Liz Prince, and Linda Celeste Sims.

The 2015 NY Dance and Performance Awards presented at the Apollo Theater are as follows:

Lifetime Achievement in Dance
Steve Paxton

For a relentless curiosity into the possibility of movement, from the redefinition of modern dance with the movers who gathered at Judson Church in the 1960s, to the development of contact improvisation now practiced around the world, and for his ongoing rigorous and surprising choreographic investigations.

Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance
Movement Research

For nearly four decades as a creative incubator for innovation, enquiry, and dialogue. For providing a range of platforms to disseminate ideas about dance, art, and civic life via its classes, publications and weekly performance gatherings. For championing the importance of artistic process.

Outstanding Production
Dorrance Dance with Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely for The Blues Project at The Joyce Theater

For a symphonic dialogue between a stellar company of tap artists and a groundbreaking blues band; a true fusion of dance and music, expanding the boundaries of two great American traditions.

Outstanding Production
David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group for I Understand Everything Better, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For creating a mysterious and whimsical world in which to explore the dual devastations of personal loss and public destruction, taking the audience on a visceral journey through internal and external storms.

Outstanding Production
Justin Peck for ‘Rōdē,ō: Four Dance Episodes, New York City Ballet

For a bracing new interpretation of a well-known score, wiping it clean of prior associations and using it as the springboard for an entirely new ballet marked by wit, surprise, poignant intimacy, and robust ensemble energy.

Outstanding Production
Roger Guenveur Smith for Rodney King at BRIC Arts Media

For a powerful and timely performance using gesture, voice, and historical document to link the personal tragedy of Rodney King’s life to our national tragedies of racism and police brutality.

For extending that conversation into the street in an improvised post-show town hall that evolved into a peaceful demonstration in reaction to the Eric Garner case unfolding in New York City.

Outstanding Revival
Alexei Ratmansky for The Sleeping Beauty, American Ballet Theatre

For recapturing the spirit and style of Petipa from 19th-century ballet notation starting with simple steps to reconstruct that world’s ideas about movement, musicality, aesthetics, and storytelling in dance.

Sustained Achievement in Performance (posthumous)
Lawrence Cassella for his work with Ivy Baldwin

For the ability to be smooth, strong, fast, fearless, dangerously sexy, and bizarrely hilarious. For more than a decade of creation in a richly intertwined collaboration with choreographer Ivy Baldwin.

Sustained Achievement in Performance
Lauren Grant for her work with the Mark Morris Dance Group

For nearly two decades’ work gracing Mark Morris’ choreography with invigorating spontaneity, expansive phrasing, and robust musicality. For bringing to life an extensive and varied repertory, embodying the essence and individual tone of each work.

Sustained Achievement in Performance
Amar Ramasar for his work with New York City Ballet

For his natural ease and contemporary presence on the classical stage. For his ongoing contributions to a wide range of new ballet work, and for his sensitivity and skill in the demanding and sometimes unseen art of partnering.

Outstanding Performance
Ryoji Sasamoto in OQ by Kota Yamazaki at Japan Society

For his mastery and presence in a dance palace filled with extraordinary movers. For a never-ending flow of movement merging an ingrained sense of lock and pop with a contemporary sense of fluid release.

Outstanding Performance
Melissa Toogood for her work in the 2014−15 season

with Pam Tanowitz, Kimberly Bartosik, Merce Cunningham, Rashaun Mitchell, Stephen Petronio, and Sally Silvers

For dancing so precise and fluid, elegant and electric, it captivates the viewer in each work in which she appears. For committing herself so completely to enhancing and transforming the vision of an astounding number of unique choreographers.

Outstanding Sound Design
Tei Blow for I Understand Everything Better by David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Abrons Arts Center and The Chocolate Factory

For a virtuosic live audio performance mixing recorded sounds, percussive rhythms, a live mic, and spinning vinyl to transport the audience from the mountains of Japan to the hurricane-ravaged shores of New York.

Outstanding Visual Design
Geoff Sobelle, Steven Dufala, Christopher Kuhl, Nick Kourtides, Jamie Boyle, and Rachel McIntosh for The Object Lesson by Geoff Sobelle at BAM Fisher

For creating an immersive environment built from the material debris of an individual life. For sparking curiosity in the audience about the need, meaning, and weight of their own lives’ objects.

As previously announced, the 2015 Emerging Choreographer Award was given to Storyboard P for fusing various styles of hip-hop with elements of modern and jazz dance, creating a cinematic choreographic vision for new dance narratives and abstract movement-based works. The 2015 Juried Bessie Award was given to Pavel Zuštiak for his poetic layering of movement and visual imagery, and conceiving of the stage space as a decentralized world in which the corporeal body is the focus and canvas for a wide range of human expression.

The ceremony will feature performances by Bessie Award-winning artists Camille A. Brown, Lisa Nelson, and Storyboard P, recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award.

This year’s Bessie Award presenters include notable members of the dance community such as Kyle Abraham, Ella Baff, Ivy Baldwin, Ping Chong, Robin Dunn, Marcelo Gomes, Rennie Harris, Cynthia Hopkins, Sam Miller, Jennifer Monson, Liz Prince, Jan Schmidt, Linda Celeste Sims, and Nancy Stark Smith.

The evening will also include special presentations to Steve Paxton, recipient of the 2015 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and Movement Research, for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

Host Bios

Jock Soto was acclaimed during his 24-year career at New York City Ballet for the incomparable skill and artistry of his partnering technique, and for his versatility as a performer in both classic and contemporary neoclassical ballets. He joined New York City Ballet in 1981 and was named a principal dancer in 1985. His extensive repertoire included leading parts in numerous works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, and original roles in new ballets by Peter Martins and Christopher Wheeldon, among others. His life is the subject of the award-winning documentary Water Flowing Together (2008) and the memoir Every Step You Take (Harper Collins, 2011). Soto is currently a faculty member at the School of American Ballet, the official academy of New York City Ballet. He will be performing with Wendy Whelan at BAM in November in a new dance-chamber opera, directed by David Michalek and choreographed by Bessie nominee David Neumann.

Carmelita Tropicana (aka Alina Troyano) is known for her contributions to the downtown art scene in New York City. A Cuban-American artist, her work rewrites history with subversive humor and fantasy. Tropicana’s performances, plays, and videos have been presented at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Hebbel Am Ufer in Berlin, Mark Taper Forum’s Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles, and El Museo del Barrio in New York City, among many others. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman award, fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a 1999 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance.

Steve Paxton is a groundbreaking artist whose investigations into movement forms have helped expand and transform what is possible in dance. His influence on and contribution to postmodern and contemporary dance span more than 50 years. Paxton danced with José Limón’s company in 1960 and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1961 to 1964. He was a founding member of the seminal dance collectives Judson Dance Theater (1962−64) and Grand Union (1970−76). Several of Paxton’s early works were created from pedestrian, everyday activities—an approach to movement that challenged the established parameters of dance, opening up new ideas for the art form. Paxton, along with his colleagues, questioned the prevailing aesthetic of modern dance, reshaping expectations of dance creation and performance. His singular exploration of improvisation has opened up new ideas for creating and composing choreographic work. In 1972, Paxton developed and named the dance form known as Contact Improvisation, a fluid form that uses shared weight and momentum to explore the relationship between dancers. Paxton freely shared this form with the dance world, and it is now practiced, taught, and performed globally. In 1986, he began developing Material for the Spine, another important technical approach to moving and thinking about dance.

Lucy Sexton, Executive Director of The Bessies, says, “Paxton’s rigorous investigations of the body, in its architecture and its personhood, has influenced generations of dance makers, and continues to challenge and delight audiences around the world. We are thrilled to be honoring this movement hero.”

Paxton’s work has recently been presented at Dia:Beacon (2014); 9th International Contemporary Dance Festival, Venice (2014); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2013); Tanz im August, Berlin (2013); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), among other venues. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the 2014 Dance Biennale in Venice and a 1995 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has received two Bessie Awards, one in 1987 for Collective Work/Part/The Goldberg Variations at The Kitchen, and the other in 1999 for ASH at Danspace Project. He has been a contributing editor to Contact Quarterly and published the DVD Material for the Spine in 2008. Paxton continues to lecture, choreograph/perform, and teach throughout the world.

Movement Research, founded in 1978, is a creative incubator that supports individual artists, creative process, and emerging ideas that advance contemporary dance languages and related forms. A catalyst for innovation, inquiry, and dialogue, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation through a range of activities, from its publications Critical Correspondence and The Performance Journal, to its many performance-based programs, including the Monday night series Movement Research at Judson Church, to its artist-in-residency program, partnerships with public schools, and classes and workshops with leading dance practitioners.

Movement Research programs publicly proclaim the importance of process and demonstrate the values of innovation and risk-taking by providing a supportive and fertile environment for research and experimentation. Movement Research strives to stimulate and disseminate dialogue and interactions across dance, other art forms, and the civic community and to reflect the cultural, political, and economic diversity of its moving community.

“Movement Research is nothing short of a miracle: a true community-based and –run organization that fosters intellectual and physical movement investigation at the highest level,” says Sexton. “It serves the field and moves the field of adventurous contemporary dance and performance forward each year.”

The 2015 ceremony will be held on Monday, October 19, at 7:30pm, at Harlem’s world famous Apollo Theater.  Doors will open at 6:30pm for a pre-show celebration and champagne toast to nominees.

The Bessies have saluted outstanding creative work in the dance field in New York City since 1984. Awards are presented for groundbreaking choreography, design, composition, and performing to artists from many dance disciplines. This year’s event will include live performances by flex superstar Storyboard P, the recipient of the 2015 Oustanding Emerging Choreographer Award, and 2014 Bessie Award-winning choreographer Camille A. Brown, whose work has been seen on Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, on Broadway, and on her own company. A highlight of the dance season, a gathering of the city’s many dance communities, this is a not-to-be-missed event for any and every dance lover.

Tickets start at $10 and can be purchased in person at the Apollo Theater Box Office; by phone – call Ticketmaster (800) 745-3000; or online at Ticketmaster.com. The Apollo Theater is located at 253 West 125th Street, New York, NY 10027.

This year’s Bessie Angel Party, in honor of Jeanne Linnes, will be held at Harlem’s Corner Social at 5:30pm. Tickets can be purchased here.

This year’s Bessies Jury—Susan Marshall, Shen Wei, and Reggie Wilson—named Pavel Zuštiak as the recipient of the 2015 Juried Bessie Award. Zuštiak was recognized for his poetic layering of movement and visual imagery, conceiving the stage space as a decentralized world in which the corporeal body is the focus and canvas for a wide range of human expression.

The Bessies Steering Committee: Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Lane Harwell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Stanford Makishi, Carla Peterson, Laurie Uprichard, and Martin Wechsler, invites you to The Bessie Cocktail Party on Wednesday, July 15th at 5pm, folled by the Bessie Press Conference at 6pm. Come raise a glass to this year’s nominees for the 2015 NY Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. Two special awards will be presented: The Bessies Juried Award, and the 2015 Bessie for Emerging Choreographer.

For tickets to the Cocktail Party at 5pm, please click here. The Press Conference begins at 6pm.

Be sure not to miss this 6th annual festive “dance family” gathering!

Moriah Evans for Social Dance 1-8: Index at Issue Project Room
Storyboard P
Troy Schumacher
Yve Laris Cohen

Congratulations to this year’s nominees! The Award for the Emerging Choreographer will be given on Wednesday, July 15th at the Bessie Press Conference at 6pm. For information on the Cocktail hour at 5pm and to register, please click here!