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Media Contact:
Barbara Ally
CDA President
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Connecticut Dance Alliance announces Lindsay Castonguay Hany, Lauren Horn, and Arien Wilkerson as recipients of new Jump Start Award for choreographers
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NOTE: This press release is being reissued to include a new photo of Jump Start Award recipient Arien Wilkerson.
HARTFORD, CT – September 11, 2019 –Connecticut Dance Alliance (CDA) is pleased to announce
Lindsay Castonguay Hany
,
Lauren Horn
and
Arien Wilkerson
as the first recipients of the newly-created
Jump Start Award for Connecticut Dance
supporting original work from Connecticut choreographers.
Hany, Horn and Wilkerson will be honored during CDA’s annual awards ceremony on Sunday, October 6. Recipients of the Distinguished Achievement in Dance Award and the Jill Henderson Award will also be recognized at the ceremony.
The Jump Start Award for Connecticut Dance provides multi-layered support for Connecticut choreographers creating original work in any dance genre, at any career level, to move forward and jump start their careers. This year’s recipients will receive implementation funds needed to create or complete a project; consulting/mentorship in a chosen area of need and/or interest - such as artistic, technical, marketing and communications, or business planning - to assist in project implementation; a series of cohort meetings to connect choreographers, build relationships, and allow for co-learning; and a complimentary one-year choreographer CDA membership.
Lindsay Castonguay Hany
, of Ellington, is a founding member and co-artistic director of IMMIX Dance Project, a contemporary dance company centered around collaboration with local artists. IMMIX Dance Project gives Connecticut dance artists the opportunity to work with other artists to produce, choreograph and perform together, as well as to be a resource for local artists looking to collaborate.The Jump Start Award will support IMMIX Dance Project’s marketing efforts to reach a wider audience.
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Photo Courtesy of
Ron Compton
Lauren Horn
is a movement and text-based artist from Windsor, Connecticut. The Jump Start Award will assist in funding artistic fees for dancers and a sound designer for
Group Piece 2.0
- a 13-minute movement and text-based piece exploring the psychological concept of groupthink. Through this piece, and continued work, Horn hopes to build more platforms for emerging artists to show their work so that young artists feel Connecticut is a place that can support their making.
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Photo courtesy of domsentfrommars
Arien Wilkerson
is the founder and artistic director of TNMOT AZTRO, a collaborative multidisciplinary company based in Hartford, Connecticut. The Jump Start Award will assist with funding artistic fees for
Lovepiece
, a new work focusing on what it takes to build a healthy relationship with yourself, using movement and sound, to uncover the process of healing from rejection, hate, poverty and humiliation within Black/Brown queer romantic relationships.
The 2019 Connecticut Dance Alliance awards ceremony, reception and performance showcase will be held Sunday, October 6, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Carol Autorino Center for the Arts and Humanities on the campus of the University of Saint Joseph, 1678 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford. Tickets can be purchased at
www.ctdanceall.org
.
About Connecticut Dance Alliance (CDA)
Connecticut Dance Alliance, Inc. (CDA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of dance in all its forms and serving the needs of the statewide dance community. Since 1999, CDA has created and presented numerous events such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Dance – a day celebrating African-American dance traditions, CDA Distinguished Achievement in Dance Awards, Healthy Dancer Seminars and workshops on Planning a College Career in dance. In 2011, CDA founded and developed a successful summer scholarship annual competition, the
Connecticut Classic
, a competition for pre-professional classical ballet students. CDA also administers the Elena Delvecchio Rusnak Dance Education Scholarship. CDA’s current project,
The Dance History Project.
Through grassroots networking, the project endeavors to capture and share, through the art of photography and scholarly writing, a cultural and historical documentation of the rich and vibrant dance heritage in Connecticut. Using the 2,000 images submitted by the dance community, the curated
Connecticut Dance
exhibition has toured the state since 2017. In addition to the
Dance History Project
, other CDA initiatives include the further development of regional network consortiums to increase communication, partnerships, and opportunities for Connecticut’s dance community; dance education programs; and the new statewide dance resource database.
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Photo courtesy of Lauren Horn
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