End of Summer Dance Awards

Dance at SummerWorks Festival in August took home two awards this year: The Canadian Stage Award for Direction went to choreographer Amanda Acorn for her group work multiform(s), and The Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation went to Riley Sims of Social Growl Dance for his work Are You Still Coming Tonight?.

On August 17, The School of Dance announced students Robin Treleaven and A.J. Ayson as recipients of this year’s Rich Little Endowment Fund for the Performing Arts provided by the City of Ottawa.

Seventeen-year-old Melissa Carnegie from Okotoks, Alberta, took home the first runner-up trophy at the World Highland Dance Championships in Scotland in August, finishing second among a field of 100 competitors in her age group.

On August 25, dance: made in canada/fait au Canada festival announced the MainStage Series Audience Choice Award went to Toronto’s Throwdown Collective for their work Various Concert. Montréal’s Parts+Labour_Danse won the audience choice award in the What You See Is What You Get Series for their work La chute. Each received a cash prize and gift of a flight from WestJet.

Brooklyn Slade from Milton, Ontario, and Sariyah Hines from Brampton, Ontario, both took home first place for the CNE’s Rising Star Talent Competition in their respective age groups in early September. Impressively, Hines competed in the thirteen to twenty-one age category and won at only thirteen years of age. 

On September 15, the Canada Council for the Arts announced Toronto-based artist Marie-Josée Chartier as the winner of the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize with a cash value of $6000. 

Toronto’s Ame Henderson of Public Recordings — a collaborative operation that conjoins artistic research, performance creation, learning and publication — was selected for a Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for dance, distributed by the Canada Council for the Arts. The award is worth $15,000 and acknowledges Henderson for her outstanding artistic achievement as a mid-career artist.