NIV ACOSTA AND LARISSA-VELEZ JACKSON WIN 2016’S THE AWARD

This year’s winners of The Award, a non-monetary mentoring initiative for performance artists in New York, have been announced as niv Acosta and Larissa-Velez Jackson. They will spend the next year partnered with mentoring artists Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez, respectively. As part of the initiative, both the awardees and their mentors will receive fall 2016 through spring 2017 season tickets and year long memberships to a number of organizations, including The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, the New Museum, New York LiveArts, Park Avenue Armory, and Performance Space 122.

Previous winners of The Award include Kim Brandt, Yanira Castro, Walter Dundervill, Neil Greenberg, John Kelly, Cori Olinghouse, Rebecca Patek, and Jen Rosenblit.

Conceived of by Dean Moss, The Award seeks to use dance’s embodied economy of direct relationships to enhance the field’s available resources by making fiscal restriction the foundation of its strategy. The Award is currently also facilitated by NYU Performance Studies Ph.D candidate Joshua Lubin-Levy.