Izzys Recognize Bay Area Artists - Isadora Duncan Dance Awards ceremonies

Dance Magazine, July, 1999

Every year the Bay Area dance community recognizes its own with the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards ceremonies. This year's "Izzy" Awards, which recognized contributions to the 1997-98 dance season, were given out during a ceremony at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

The Izzy for best individual performance went to San Francisco Ballet's Lucia Lacarra for her role as the man-eating Amazonian in Jerome Robbins's The Cage. That production also won SFB an Izzy for best revival/reconstruction. SFB also received the award for best company performance of Othello.

The Izzy for best choreography went to Keith Hennessy, Jules Beckman, and Jess Curtis, who recently relocated to France, for Ice/Car/Cage; this work was also recognized for best visual design: sets. Other awards for visual design went to Raquel Lopez (costumes) of El Cuadro Flamenco and Joe Williams (lighting) for his contribution to the Sky Dancers Evening at Brady Street. The a cappella group SoVoSo won the Izzy for music for their score to Robert Moses's Mother May I; Kim Epifano and Rafael Vargas Benita won for text and sound of Calida Fornax.

Dancers' Group executive director Wayne Hazzard dressed as Shirley MacLaine (spokesperson for this year's National Dance Week) to give the two Izzys for ensemble performances to Robert Moses, Joe Venegoni, and Dan Reiter for Untitled Solo #4; and Shannon Mitchell and Kevin Ware for KT Nelson's On the Loose.

This year's awards for sustained achievement went to educators David Wood and Marni Thomas Wood; the Zellerbach Family Fund; and philanthropists Chris and F. Warren Hellman.

Patrick Makuakane received a special Izzy for his full-length The World According to Hula, in which his company Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu evokes both contemporary And ancient Hawaiian culture.

Hotline was reported by Horst Koegler (Germany), Rita Felciano (Izzys and Summerfest), Wilma Salisbury (Poll), Karyn Bauer (Dupond), Marene Gustin (Houston).