Honors & Awards
November 27, 2014

  • Former New York City Ballet principal Patricia McBride receives the 2014 Kennedy Center Honors on December 7. McBride, 72, spent 28 years as a principal at NYCB and joins the ranks of Arthur Mitchell, Jacques d’Amboise, Maria Tallchief, Edward Villella, Suzanne Farrell, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine as a Kennedy Center honoree. McBride and her husband Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux direct Charlotte Ballet (formerly known as North Carolina Dance Theatre). Look for the broadcast on CBS, December 30 at 9 pm, EST.
  • The American Dance Guild honors Philadanco founder Joan Myers Brown, choreographer and educator Bill Evans and choreographer Douglas Dunn at its annual festival, December 4–7, at The Ailey Citigroup Theater in New York. In keeping with the festival’s tradition, the works of the honorees will be performed alongside the works of emerging choreographers as a living timeline of modern dance. For tickets and the full roster of the 33 choreographers presenting work, see americandanceguild.org.

    Philadanco performing Christopher Huggins’ Enemy Behind the Gates

  • The New York State Dance Education Association announces its 2014 awardees: for outstanding leadership, Pat Cohen and Joan Finkelstein (DT, November 2005); for outstanding dance educator, post-secondary, Bill Evans (DT, July 2010); for outstanding dance researcher, Elizabeth McPherson, author of The Bennington School of the Dance; for life achievement, Elsa Posey, director of the National Registry of Dance Educators; and for the Diana Domoracki-Kisto award—which gives a dance educator $500 toward attending the National Dance Education Organization’s national conference—Traci Hinton-Peterson, a middle school dance teacher in the NYC Department of Education.
  • The New York Dance and Performance Awards—nicknamed “The Bessies” after influential choreographer Bessie Schönberg—honors Arthur Mitchell for lifetime achievement in dance and Dr. Chuck Davis for outstanding service to the field. Mitchell was New York City Ballet’s first African-American principal. In 1969, he created Dance Theatre of Harlem, the first African-American classical ballet company. Davis directs the African American Dance Ensemble in North Carolina and created the annual DanceAfrica! festival.

 

Photo by Lois Greenfield, courtesy of ADG

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