Su-Feh Lee and Ziyian Kwan receive BC Dance Awards

Vancouver’s Dance Centre has announced the recipients of two awards acknowledging British Columbia choreographers. Su-Feh Lee, co-artistic director of battery opera performance, has received the Lola Award, a $10,000 biennial prize for mid-career and senior choreographers. Ziyian Kwan is the recipient of the Isadora Award for excellence in performance. The awards were announced in a presentation at the Scotiabank Dance Centre on March 27th.

The Lola Award is supported by the Lola MacLaughlin Endowment Fund and the Vancouver Foundation, in memory of the late influential Vancouver dancer and choreographer Lola MacLaughlin. The Isadora Award celebrates the achievements of the dance profession in British Columbia, this year recognizing Ziyian Kwan’s outstanding twenty-five-year career as a dancer. Isadora Award recipients receive $500 cash and $1000 of subsidized rehearsal space at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.

Both Su-Feh Lee and Ziyian Kwan are prolific contributors to contemporary dance locally, nationally and internationally. Su-Feh has created a rigorous body of work that includes the Alcan Award commission Cyclopes (2003), the solo work The Whole Beast (2008) and Sweet Gyre with Benôit Lachambre and composer Jess Zubot. Currently, Lee is working on building a Dance Machine with dance artist Justine Chambers and architect Jesse Garlick, and is also participating in Migrant Bodies, a two-year international research project hosted by The Dance Centre. Ziyian has performed close to one hundred original works over the span of her career, working with a diverse range of artists including Peter Bingham, Robin Poitras, filmmaker Bruce La Bruce and visual artist David Khang. This season Ziyian is creating new works for CanAsian Dance’s Kickstart, the Dancing on the Edge Festival and EDAM’s choreographic series.