The 2024 Dance Magazine Awards will honor George Faison, Joanna Haigood, Liz Lerman, Mavis Staines, and Shen Wei. The Chairman’s Award will go to Mikhail Baryshnikov for his work with Baryshnikov Arts, and the posthumous awards will celebrate six artists who were not recognized by the awards committee during their lifetimes.
A tradition dating back to 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards are given in appreciation of the artistry, integrity, and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers. The theme for 2024 is “the stage and beyond”: The dancers, choreographers, and educators in this remarkable group of honorees are invested in work that often transcends the proscenium.
A ceremony to recognize this year’s recipients will be held in New York City at Baryshnikov Arts on Monday, December 2, at 7 pm EST, with performances and presentations for each. For ticket information, visit dancemedia.com.
George Faison
George Faison is an award-winning, internationally celebrated producer, writer, essayist, composer, director, choreographer, and dancer. He made history in 1975 when he became the first African American to win a Tony Award for best choreography, for his work on The Wiz.
Faison began his career as a leading dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and went on to form his own company, the George Faison Universal Dance Experience. He has staged concerts for some of music’s greatest artists and written, directed, and choreographed extensively for musical theater and film. In 2000, Faison and Tad Schnugg established The Faison Firehouse Theater, a unique arts-based outreach and youth theater project, in a decommissioned firehouse in Harlem.
Joanna Haigood
Since 1980 Joanna Haigood has been creating work that uses natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Her work has been commissioned by many arts institutions, including Dancing in the Streets, Jacob’s Pillow, the Walker Art Center, the National Black Arts Festival, and Festival d’Avignon. Haigood has had the privilege to mentor many extraordinary young artists at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque, the Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Spelman College, Stanford University, the San Francisco Circus Center, and Zaccho Studio.
Liz Lerman
Liz Lerman is a choreographer, educator, author, mother, wife, and daughter. A serial entrepreneur, she founded Dance Exchange in 1976 and has since successfully passed it on to other brilliant artists. Her dances, from New York City Winter (1974) to Wicked Bodies (2022), celebrate embodied knowledge with unusual subjects and storytelling techniques; her new dance-based public artwork, My Body is a Library, continues this exploration. A professor at Arizona State University, Lerman is the author of several books that reveal the curiosity that motivates her choreographic processes. Her many awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Mavis Staines
A visionary educator and leader, Mavis Staines is one of the foremost champions of ballet evolution, recognized around the world for her courage and integrity in seizing every opportunity to make dance more inclusive and accessible. During her 35 years as artistic director of Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS), her leadership modeled ambitious ways of taking the art form into the future.
Recently retired, she remains committed to work on advancing equity and addressing anti-Black racism in ballet’s practices. She now serves as an NBS Global Ambassador, working in partnership with NBS on key initiatives, and serving the art form of ballet as a whole.
Shen Wei
Shen Wei is a choreographer, painter, dancer, and director. Born in Hunan, China, he was a founding member of the country’s first modern dance troupe, Guangdong Modern Dance Company. In 1995, he was awarded a fellowship to study at the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab and moved to New York. In 2000 he founded his own company, Shen Wei Dance Arts, which has since toured to more than 140 cities. He choreographed the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and has received commissions from dance organizations around the world; his dance technique, “Natural Body Development,” has been taught widely. His numerous awards include a MacArthur Fellowship and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement in Choreography.
Chairman’s Award: Mikhail Baryshnikov
Born in Riga, Latvia, Mikhail Baryshnikov is considered one of the greatest dancers of our time. After commencing a spectacular career with the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he came to the West in 1974, where he joined American Ballet Theatre as a principal dancer. In 1980 he was appointed artistic director of ABT, where, for the next decade, he introduced a new generation of dancers and choreographers. In 1990, Baryshnikov and choreographer Mark Morris co-founded the White Oak Dance Project, with the intent to expand the repertoire and visibility of American modern dance. In 2005, Mikhail Baryshnikov launched Baryshnikov Arts, a creative space in New York City designed to support multidisciplinary artists from around the globe.
Posthumous Awards
This year’s posthumous awards pay tribute to dancer, singer, and film star Carmen Amaya; dancer, choreographer, and director Talley Beatty; dancer and humanitarian Michaela Mabinty DePrince; dancer and educator ‘Iolani Luahine; pioneering dancer Raven Wilkinson; and dancer, director, and educator Yuriko.
Stay tuned for Dance Magazine‘s December issue to learn more about each of these artists and how they have shaped the dance field.
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