The BESSIE Winners were announced and are listed in their entirety below.

FULL PRODUCTIONS HONORED FOR 2008-09

837 Venice Boulevard
Choreographed by Faye Driscoll
Lighting design by Amanda K. Ringger
Set design by Sara C. Walsh
Costume design by Normandy Sherwood
Performers Nikki Zialcita, Michael Helland, Celia Rowlson-Hall

For masterfully invoking a collective past by exploring the raw intensity of childhood; for using text, movement, and song to uncover the falsity of the performance of identity; and for calling forth the true emotions beneath the surface, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Faye Driscoll’s “837 Venice Boulevard.”

Pent-Up: A Revenge Dance
Created and choreographed by Okwui Okpokwasili
Directed and designed by Peter Born
Performed by Okwui Okpokwasili and Gloria Huwiler

For conjuring an uncomfortably intimate, viscerally theatrical landscape inhabited by two women—a lone mother and her daughter, who map out the psychic territories of race history, and identity fueled by inexhaustible rage and unknowable anger, yet who are ultimately redeemed by compassion, humanity and a delicate grace at Performance Space 122, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Okwui Okpokwasili’s “Pent Up: A Revenge Dance”

Stolen
Choreographed by Yvonne Meier
Music by Alsarah
Lighting design by Kathy Kaufman
Performed by Arturo Vidich and Aki Sasamoto

For leading the audience with absolute sureness and skill, into a magical, mysterious and oftentimes mischievous world filled with ever-folding fabric, electric cords used as jump ropes, and a Buster Keaton-worthy dance with a coffee table at Danspace Project, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Yvonne Meier’s “Stolen”.

Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references in the world cannot heal the pain, confusion, regret, cruelty, betrayal or trauma . . .)
Choreography, performance, installation and visuals by Keith Hennessy

For combining virtuosic improvisation, a history of Western Art in seven minutes and playful, sexy, shamanistic trickery that both enchanted and terrified at Dance Theater Workshop, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Keith Hennessy’s “Antibody” and “Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references in the world cannot heal the pain, confusion, regret, cruelty, betrayal or trauma … )”

Dark Horse/Black Forest
Direction and Choreography by Yanira Castro
Music by Stephan Moore
Installation by Charles Merritt Houghton
Costume Design by Suzanne Dougan
Lighting by Kathy Couch
Video by Peter Richards

Performed by Heather Olson, Joseph Poulson, Luke Miller, and Darrin Wright For an intimate, sensual, and voyeuristic installation that invited audiences inside an intensely emotional and private love story in a hotel lobby bathroom filled with lights, mirrors, and video screens, presented by Performance Space 122 at The Gershwin Hotel, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Yanira Castro’s “Dark Horse / Black Forest”

Be in the Gray With Me
Choreographed by Pam Tanowitz
Score composed by Pavel Karmanov and Dan Siegler
Lights and Scenic design by Philip Treviño
Costumes designed by Renée Kurz
Performed by Christina Amendolia, Dylan Crossman, Ashlie Kittleson, Ellie Kusner, Anne Lentz, Theresa Ling, Rashaun Mitchell, Glen Rumsey, Dan Siegler, Uta Takemura

For using plastic sheets and lighting to transform Dance Theater Workshop into a chambered laboratory and populating it with skilled dancers performing a rich blend of balletic modern with quotes from dance history, a 2009 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Pam Tanowitz’s “Be in the Gray With Me.”

FULL PRODUCTIONS HONORED FOR 2009-10

The Radio Show
Choreographed by Kyle Abraham
Score mixed by Kyle Abraham and including orignal music by Amber Lee Parker
Score by Alva Noto, mixed with music by Ryoji Ikeda
Costume design by Sarah Cubbage
Lighting design by Dan Scully.
Performed by Maureen Damaso, Samantha Farrow, Raja Kelly, Nicole Mannarino, Jeremy Nedd, Amber Lee Parker, Rachelle Rafailedes, and Kyle Abraham

For daring to mix stuff thought not to be mixable in a work that asked questions about communication and community using humor, lush and striking dance moves, and a lingering sense of loss at Danspace Project, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Kyle Abraham’s “The Radio Show”.

Last Meadow
Created and choreographed by Miguel Gutierrez in collaboration with the performers, with assistance from Alex Anfanger and Neal Medlyn
Performed by Michelle Boulé, Miguel Gutierrez, and Tarek Halaby
Sound Design by Neal Medlyn
Lighting Design by Lenore Doxsee
Costume Styling by David Tabbert

For engaging movement, language, and sound to explore American archetypes, featuring performers unafraid to embody characters and then abandon everything at Dance Theater Workshop, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Miguel Gutierrez’s “Last Meadow”.

PURO DESEO
Concept and direction by luciana achugar
Choreography and performance by Michael Mahalchick and luciana achugar
Lighting design by Madeline Best
Costume design by Walter Dundervill

For casting a spell on the audience and taking them into the dark, dark mysteries of the body and all its desires at The Kitchen, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to luciana achugar’s “PURO DESEO”.

Comme Toujours, Here I Stand
By Big Dance Theater
Directed and choreographed by Annie-B Parson
Co-direction by Paul Lazar
Video by Jeff Larson
Original title song by Robyn Hitchcock
Costume design by Claudia Stephen Claudia Stephens
Lighting design by Joe Levasseur.
Set design by Joanne Howard
Sound design by Jane Shaw
Performed by Tymberly Canale, Chris Giarmo, Molly Hickok, Ryutaro Mishima, Kourtney Rutherford, Chris Wendelken, Aaron Rosenblum and Jeff Larson
On Video – Stacy Dawson Stearns

For fearlessly re-inventing a classic New Wave film for live stage using an elaborate fusion of dance, music, and theater, resulting in a totally new work filled with sadness, humor, and warmth, 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Big Dance Theater’s “Comme Toujours Here I Stand”.

Grupo de Rua’s H3
Direction and Choreography by Bruno Beltrao
Assistant directed by Ugo Alexandre Neves
Dramaturgy Rodrigo Bernardi
Music by Lucas Marcier, Rodrigo Marçal -­‐ ARPX
Costume design by Marcelo Sommer
Lighting design by Renato Machado and Bruno Beltrão
Set design by Gualter Pupo
Performed by Thiago Almeida, Bruno Neres, Bruno Duarte, Augusto Eduardo Hermanson, Luiz Carlos Gadelha, Kleberson Goncalves, Kristiano Goncalves, Filipi De Morais, Danilo Pereira

For delving deeply into the theatrical possibilities of hip-hop, ranging from subtly poetic to flat-out adrenalizing, and for overturning every stereotype about the genre at Dance Theater Workshop, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Grupo de Rua’s “H3”

parades & changes, replays
(a re-enactment of Parades & Changes, created by Anna Halprin in collaboration with Morton Subotnick – 1965)
Conception & artistic direction Anne Collod in dialogue with Anna Halprin and Morton Subotnick
Music by Morton Subotnick assisted by Sébastien Roux
Costumes designed by Anna Halprin
Set designed by Anne Collod and Mikko Hynninen
Performed by Boaz K. Barkan, Nuno Bizarro, Alain Buffard, Anne Collod, DD Dorvillier, Emmanuelle Huyhn, Vera Mantero, Laurent Pichaud, Fabrice Ramalingom

For reconfiguring the pedestrian into a performance piece that reflects life itself; for reminding us that mystery and magic reside in the mind and can be discovered in the routine as well as the exotic, for bringing this trailblazing performance work back to life, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Anne Collod’s reenactment of Anna Halprin and Morton Subotnick’s “parades and changes, replay”.

PERFORMERS HONORED FOR WORK DURING 2008-2010

Michelle Boulé
For channeling the essence of James Dean’s character Cal in East of Eden through fearlessly dancing, singing, acting, and brooding in Last Meadow, presented at Dance Theater Workshop, , a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Michelle Boulé.

Young dancers from Sarah Michelson’s Dover Beach
Latysha Antonio, Sofia Britos, Non Griffiths, Allegra Herman
For their exacting performance in Sarah Michelson’s Dover Beach, at the Kitchen, lending an innocent but romantically charged fervor to Michelson’s eccentrically elegant vision of mortals in motion, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Latysha Antonio, Sofia Britos, Non Griffiths, Allegra Herman.

David Leventhal
For adding a singular polish and elegance to every step he performed, and for projecting a keen intelligence with a twinkle in his eye while bringing to exhilarating life more than 40 of Mark Morris’s works, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to David Leventhal.

Heather Olson
For being a Raphaelite muse who sculpts the work from inside and out, through consistent, compelling, committed creation and development in performances over many years and many works dancing with Tere O’Connor, a 2009-2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Heather Olson.

Miki Orihara
For her commitment to the true spirit and rigorous interpretation of the work of Martha Graham; for her constancy in keeping Graham’s work alive onstage and in the classroom; and for the remarkable
beauty, grace, and power of her dancing, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Miki Orihara

Ensemble of dancers in Paradigm
Bold, beautiful and boundless, the performers of Paradigm have dared choreographers to “bring it,” and they have delivered. In work after work, these grand performers, without fail, bring into vibrant focus the essence of what it means to dance. A 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Carmen deLavallade, Gus Solomons jr, Carmen deLavallade, Dudley Williams, Valda Setterfield, Michael Blake, Hope Clark, and Keith Sabado

Kayvon Pourazar
For the fierce individuality of his sensual, grounded presence; for his ability to move through space with knife-slicing precision combined with a tender, fluid physicality; and for fully-embodying the choreographic sensibilities of the artists he dances with, most notably in the works of John Jasperse and Yasuko Yokoshi, a 2010 New York Dance and Performance Award goes to Kayvon Pourazar.