​FROM THE FOLKS AT THE BESSIES:

The NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announced today that Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and founding artistic director of Urban Bush Women, will be the recipient of the 2017 NY Dance and Performance Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and writer Eva Yaa Asantewaa will receive this year’s award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. The two awards will be presented at the 33rd annual Bessie Awards ceremony on Monday, October 9, at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

“I am thrilled that the Bessies Selection Committee has chosen to honor these two outstanding women," says Lucy Sexton, Executive Director of The Bessies. “Jawole Willa Jo Zollar has created groundbreaking dance with her company Urban Bush Women for more than three decades. In addition, her revolutionary insight into curating and her dedication to nurturing dance artists, particularly women choreographers of color, continues to transform and expand the dance landscape. Eva Yaa Asentewaa's illuminating writing and her multifaceted and engaged support for the wide range of dance artists in the city are truly a service to our field, and we are so excited to be celebrating her.”

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar was born and raised in Kansas City, MO. She trained with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham. She received a B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980 Zollar moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion. In 1984 she founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) as a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. In addition to 34 works for UBW, she has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and others, and with collaborators including Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. In 2006 Zollar received a NY Dance and Performance Award for her work as choreographer/creator of Walking With Pearl...Southern Diaries. Featured in the PBS documentary Free to Dance, Zollar was designated a Master of African-American Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005. Her company has toured five continents and has performed at venues including BAM, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. UBW was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State in 2010. She serves as founding artistic director of UBW, director of UBW’s Summer Leadership Institute, and currently holds the position of the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. Zollar received a 2008 United States Artists Wynn fellowship and a 2009 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Still dancing, she recently toured in a sold-out national tour presented by 651 Arts as a leading influential dancer/choreographer on a program that included her early mentor Dianne McIntyre, her collaborator Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, and Bebe Miller. Zollar has received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award as well as honorary degrees from Tufts University and Rutgers University. Zollar is the recipient of a 2016 Dance Magazine award and the 2016 Dance/USA Honor Award.
 
Eva Yaa Asantewaa was first published as a dance writer in 1976. Her work has appeared in Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance-Enthusiast, Time Out New York, and other print and online venues. In 2007, Yaa Asantewaa founded her arts blog, InfiniteBody (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com). She created and hosted the Body and Soul dance podcast and the Serious Moonlight dance podcast, coproduced with Tei Blow, both available on iTunes. She was a member of the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program (2016–17) and the inaugural faculty of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s Moving Forward Dialogues dance lab for emerging artists (2017). Yaa Asantewaa joined the curatorial team for Danspace Project’s 2016 platform Lost and Found and created the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers for an evening of group improvisation. As a WBAI radio broadcaster (1987–89), Yaa Asantewaa worked with the Women’s Radio Collective and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Broadcasters Collective, cohosted the Tuesday Afternoon Arts Magazine, and produced her own specials. Since the 1980s, she has also been active in service to numerous LGBTQ, feminist, POC, and arts organizations and initiatives as a workshop facilitator in alternative practices of meditation, divination, ritual, and wellness. She is a native New Yorker of Barbadian immigrant heritage and lives in the East Village.
 
The 33rd annual Bessie Awards, hosted by Shernita Anderson and James Whiteside, will be held on Monday, October 9, at 7:30pm, at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets start at $12 and can be purchased online at NYU. NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is located at 566 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY 10012. 

Making Dance September: Nia LoveSeptember 8 & 9 / 12 – 3 pm
September 15 & 16 / 12 – 3 pm
280 Broadway / $100
This workshop creates space where we can study ways to perform and respond to our world meaningfully, powerfully, and truthfully through building improvisations at the intersections of dance, nature, and urban structures.

​SIGN UP HERE

Sign up now for LiftOff Workshop Fall/Winter 2017!

Tuesdays - October 3 - December 26 @ 6:00 - 9:00 PM(10 sessions, space is limited)
Cost: $250

For more information and to register, email [email protected]
About LiftOffFall/Winter and Winter/Spring workshops strive to create a safe and intimate space to receive feedback that supports the aesthetics of seasoned artists and explore resources to enable development. The group meets weekly for a three-hour session for 10 weeks with feedback facilitated by NDA director Karen Bernard.

During the workshop three guests from the industry are invited to participate in the feedback process. Past guests have included Mathew Lyons, Curator, The Kitchen; Yvonne Meier, Choreographer; Kathy Kaufmann, Lighting Designer; Anya Liftig, Performance Artist; Yve Laris Cohen, Performance and Multidiscipline Artist; Moirah Evans, Choreographer; Craig Peterson, Dance Curator, Abrons Arts Center; Shelley Hirsch, Singer and Composer; among others.

Twenty hours of discounted rehearsal space available at $5 per hour. The studio is located at 182 Duane Street in the heart of Tribeca.

Read more about LiftOff
​
Register now by emailing [email protected]!

Designed for artists developing their careers and making work in NYC, Work Up and LANDING offer support, build community, and provide artists with opportunities to learn and share with one another. Application deadlines are approaching, so learn more below + start working on your applications!

Work Up 4.0
Application Opens Wednesday, August 30 at 10:00 am EST
Work Up is a residency, professional development program, and performance opportunity that supports emerging dance and performance artists whose work demonstrates risk, relevance, and research.
Out of 100 written submissions, a panel will invite 40 artists to an in-person audition. Nine works will be selected for presentation on three shared programs in March 2018, each featuring three artists. Each program will receive two performances in Studio C at Gibney Dance 280 Broadway.
Work Up artists receive a $1,000 performance fee and 30 hours of granted rehearsal space. Additionally, Work Up artists will meet as a cohort for three informal showings between November 2017 and February 2018, and have the opportunity to participate in several professional development workshops.

LEARN MORE HERE

LANDING 2.0
Applications due
​Wednesday, September 6 at 11:59 pm EST
Fee: $600 / Partial Scholarships & Payment Plans Available
Designed collaboratively with Miguel Gutierrez, LANDING addresses the interests and challenges that face dance artists who are newly arrived to New York, and those who feel the need for better navigation through the current dance and performance landscape. 

Over six months, the selected artists artists meet with Gutierrez and guest performing artists and administrators for workshops, artist talks, studio time, performances, and public presentation.

2018 Guest Artists include: Boychild, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jen Rosenblit, Keith Hennessy, Larissa Velez Jackson, Marguerite Hemmings, Marissa Perel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Yve Laris Cohen, Members of LANDING 1.0: Stephanie Acosta, Babay L. Angles, & xtian w

APPLY HERE

WHEN: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
September 13, 14, & 15 12PM (Noon) -  3:00pm
Please arrive no later than 11:45AM to register and warm up. Attendees MUST be prepared to attend all 3 days of the audition in order to be considered for a position. 
 
WHERE: STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (SLAM)
51 NORTH 1st Street (between Kent & Wythe Avenues) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11249 (L train to Bedford Ave. stop).
 
WHO: People with professional-level training in any form of ACTION including dancers, acrobats, athletes, gymnasts, martial artists, etc. You must be comfortable with physical heights, impact, falls, and extreme aerobic activity. Strong modern/ ballet technique is encouraged. Tumbling experience is a plus, but not a requirement. 
 
Please bring:

• Clothes that are easy to move in
• Dance shoes or gymnastics shoes (shoes you can run/ jump/ dance in) if you have them 
• Performance resume AND general resume reflecting any kind of professional work you have done or skills you may possess
• A recent photo or headshot

Questions, please email [email protected]. 
There is no prior registration.

Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) - Third Bi-Annual Conference

DANCE BLACK JOY: Global Affirmations and Defiance
​February 16 - 18, 2018 - Duke University - Durham NC
 CALL FOR CONFERENCE PROPOSALS
The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) third conference aims to carry forward enlivening discussions on the power and politics of global Black Dance by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration. DANCE BLACK JOY: Global Affirmations and Defiance seeks to center African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic possibility. It pursues the following lines of inquiry:

• How do dance and movement practices across the African diaspora articulate and affirm the lived experiences of Black people?
• How might dance function as a tool to critique or confront systemic oppressions faced by people of African descent globally?
• What are the limits and possibilities for African diaspora dance/performance to challenge the state?
• What new pedagogical pathways for diasporic dance practices are emerging within higher education?
• What opportunities for affirmation and defiance emerge when Afro-descended bodies perform non-diasporic dance vocabularies? Or when others perform African diaspora dance?

 
Anchored by critical dialogue and provocative research presentations, the conference will feature breakout sessions, movement workshops, film screenings, and a performance of CANE: a responsive environment dancework, conceived by Thomas F. DeFrantz and SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in collaboration with Wideman/Davis Dance.  
 
We are interested in papers and presentations that consider dance practices throughout the African diaspora, the specific contexts that engender them and the ways in which they circulate to affirm Black life and thriving. Similarly, we are interested in conference contributions that imagine various practices of African diaspora dance as a fugitive site for Black joy. We welcome papers that represent a rigorous engagement with a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.​
 
Possible topics include:

• African diaspora dance and the Movement for Black Lives
• Black dance and the politics of joy, elation, and community building
• African diaspora dance geographies and the specificity of place
• African diaspora dance in US higher education: opportunities and challenges
• How race, gender, class and sexuality inform African diaspora dance communities

 
The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion that captures a variety of topics, approaches, and methods that might constitute Black Dance Studies.
 
Deadline for Proposals: October 1, 2017 - Confirmations Sent: October 15, 2017

Submit your proposal here.