Visit with Maria Hassabi, 2015 Alpert Award winner

Dance artist Maria Hassabi
(photo courtesy of The Herb Alpert Foundation)

The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to five risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts.

Click here to explore video, images and a conversation with New York-based choreographer Maria Hassabi, winner, the 2015 Alpert Award for Dance...

...for changing the nature of spectatorship, for challenging conventional ideas about performance, for stripping away busyness and the ornamentation of dancing to allow for rare contemplative experience.

Alpert Award-winning choreographers featured online

Irene Borger, who directs the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, has sent me the following note about the Alpert Award's enhanced Web presence and extensive information about Alpert winners in the field of dance. Click the provided links for entry to this treasure house.

Tap artist Michelle Dorrance
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

What do some of today’s most compelling choreographers say about their work? Who – and what – has inspired them? What’s the place of collaboration in their practice? How do they view their lineage? What questions are they asking? What’s hard?

Right here: a substantive resource – the Herb Alpert Award website - filled with performance videos, exclusive interviews with choreographer-performers Nora Chipaumire, Michelle Dorrance, Susan Rethorst, Jess Curtis, and Julia Rhoads.

Michelle Dorrance, HAAIA in Dance 2014

Julia Rhoads, HAAIA in Dance 2013

Nora Chipaumire, HAAIA in Dance 2012

Jess Curtis, HAAIA in Dance 2011

Susan Rethorst, HAAIA in Dance 2010

The site itself invites questions: How does one represent an artist’s work? What makes a good interview? How do you organize text, images and time-based documentation to create useful and compelling web pages?

How does receiving a $75,000 award affect an artist? Watch here.

For a look at other risk-taking mid-career Herb Alpert winners working in Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, click here.

Alpert Award winners announced. Congrats to Michelle Dorrance!

Michelle Dorrance
(photo by Christopher Duggan)

Philanthropists Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Alpert
Herb Alpert Foundation
(photo by Louis Oberlander)

Congratulations to New York-based dancer-choreographer Michelle Dorrance, one of five winners of the 2014 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, for her exemplary, innovative work in tap dance.

To read more about this award and Dorrance's fellow awardees--Deborah Stratman (film), Matana Roberts (music), Annie Dorsen (theater) and Daniel Joseph Martinez (visual arts), click here.

Dancer Nora Chipaumire: exile and identity

Irene Borger, Director of the Alpert Award in the Arts, has posted a new interview with the brilliant, charismatic Nora Chipaumire, 2012 Alpert winner for Dance.

Eisa Davis and Nora Chipaumire among Alpert winners

Dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire (c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

 

How exciting to see two of my favorite New York artists--Nora Chipaumire (choreography) and multi-talented Eisa Davis (theater) among the winners of this year's Alpert Award in the Arts.

The Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to five risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts.

The prize was initiated and funded by the Herb Alpert Foundation and has been administered by California Institute of the Arts since 1994. The Alpert Award honors and supports artists respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work, at a moment in their lives when they are poised to propel their art in new and unpredictable directions. The Alpert recognizes experimenters who are making something that matters within and beyond their field.

Read more about the Alpert Award.

Read about and hear from the 2012 winners:

Nora Chipaumire

Kevin Everson (film)

Myra Melford (music)

Eisa Davis

Michael Smith (visual arts)

Rethorst and Rev. Billy win Alpert Award

And while we're at it, cheers to dancer artist Susan Rethorst, theatrical gadfly Bill Talen ("Reverend Billy") and all the other winners of the 2010 Alpert Award in the Arts!

2010 Alpert recipients

About the Alpert Awards

An Alpert Award for Reggie Wilson

Hearty congratulations to dancer-choreographer Reggie Wilson, winner of the 2009 Alpert Award in Dance. Wilson, and frequent collaborator Andréya Ouamba of Senegal will present the premiere of The Good Dance -- Dakar/Brooklyn during this year's BAM Next Wave Festival.

2009 Alpert Award in the Arts