IZZlE AWARDS HONOR BROAD SPECTRUM OF BAY AREA DANCERS - Isadora Duncan Awards, San Francisco, California - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, July, 2001 by Rita Felciano

With Bay Area dance doyenne Anna Halprin and John Killacky, executive director of San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, as congenial masters of ceremony, the Bay Area celebrated its own during the fifteenth annual Isadora Duncan Awards on April 23. Held in the Green Room of the War Memorial Veterans Building, they were co-sponsored by the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum.

One of this ceremony's most appealing aspects is in its gathering, and honoring, of the widest possible spectrum of Bay Area dancers. Special Awards for Sustained Achievement were given to Judy Job, who has taught at Peters Wright Creative Dance Studio, San Francisco's oldest dance school, since 1945 and has been its director since 1985; Jocelyn Vollmar, who teaches for the San Francisco Ballet School and has been associated with the company since 1939; and Nontsizi Cayou, who started the Dance Department at San Francisco State University.

Izzies were also awarded for best choreography to novice choreographer Yuri Possokhov for his Magrittomania (for San Francisco Ballet) and master of the craft Bill T. Jones for Fantasy in C Major (for AXIS Dance Company).

This was clearly a bumper year for SFB and AXIS, two companies that could not be more different. The first is America's oldest ballet company and the second a fourteen-year-old ensemble of dancers with and without disabilities. SFB's Discovery Program--a special program of six world premieres, four of them by SFB dancers--won its own special award. (Magrittomania was a Discovery Program piece.) Natalia Makarova won for her SFB reconstruction of "Kingdom of the Shades" from La Bayadere; Julie Diana, Rachel Rufer, Peter Brandenhoff, and Damian Smith won for ensemble performance in Kenneth McMillan's The Invitation. Magrittomania also won Izzies for Thyra Hartshorn (scenic and costume design) and Kevin Connaughton (lighting). AXIS received an Izzy for company performance, while AXIS dancer Uli Schmitz took one home for individual achievement.

Other awards went to Joe Goode Performance Group dancer Liz Burritt, also for individual performance; Heather Basarab for production design of Goode's Drowsy; Jadson Caldeira and Sonya Delwaide for ensemble performance in Depart; Krissy Keefer for text in Research/Phase I/Monk at the Met--a Community Performance Extravaganza; the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra for music created for Savage Jazz Dance Company and the Marcus Shelby Sextet for a piece for Robert Henry Johnson 2000. Anna Halprin got special recognition from the California Arts Council.

Finally, former San Francisco supervisor Sue Bierman presented a special "Dance Community in Action" award to a number of individuals, including Keith Hennessy, Wayne Hazzard, and Krissy Keefer, who have fought, and are still fighting, to save affordable rehearsal and performance spaces in San Francisco.