committee

Lili Chopra is currently the Artistic Director of the French Institute/Alliance Francaise (FIAF) in New York City producing and co-curating the trans-disciplinary fall festival Crossing the Line, and curating the spring World Nomads season. She has extensive experience in programming, producing and marketing international events and performance work in both France and New York. She was Special Projects Manager for Diane von Furstenberg, and prior to that spent four years at Dance Theater Workshop working closely with David White as Associate Producer, and as Curator of the Gallery. Earlier she worked with various companies and independent artists as administrator and producer.

Nancy Dalva has lived in New York City since 1983, but attended dance seasons here well before then. She is the producer/writer of the web series Mondays with Merce (Cunningham), and also writes and talks about dance on line, in print, on the air, and in person--this last both privately and publicly. Her long time hobby is attending the lectures of the poet, translator, and man of letters Richard Howard.

Joan Finkelstein toured and taught nationally and internationally in the 1970s and 80s with the Cliff Keuter Dance Company, the Don Redlich Dance Company, the Jean-Lon Destin Afro-Haitian Dance Company, and the Manhattan Festival Ballet, among others. She has taught at public schools in New York City, Westchester, and across the nation, and has been a guest lecturer at numerous colleges and universities. Her choreographic work has been commissioned by the Atlanta Ballet, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and South Carolina Ballet Theatre. From 1992-2004 she was Director of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, overseeing classes, arts-in-education programs, and performances including an annual five-week fully produced festival. Joan became Director of Dance Programs for the New York City Department of Education in June 2004. Her ongoing work with the NYCDOE’s Office of Arts and Special Projects supports excellence in dance education in the 1,500 schools across NYC’s five boroughs.

Active in dance producing and design for dance in NYC for the past 30 years, Philip Sandstrom has designed lightingfor dance, the performing arts, the visual arts, and architecture. His extensive lighting work for dance, theater, and performance art has ranged from the novice to the emerging to the famous, covering themany genres of the Off and Off-Off Broadway scene. In creating original designs on the national and international touring circuits he has worn paths through Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis, Washington, DC, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France,Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. His work in television includes broadcasts by Dance in America and Metro Arts. He is the recipient of three New York Dance and Performance Awards (aka Bessies) for Lighting Design. He worked for many years as the Director of Operations and Production at Dance Theater Workshop, producing thousands of productions. He has also worked as a writer for Dance Insider, Critical Dance, and Stage and Cinema.

Yoko Shioya has been Artistic Director of Japan Society since 2006, overseeing the Society's Performing Arts and Film Programs. Since joining the Society in 1997 and assuming the position of Director of Performing Arts in 2003, she has expanded collaborative projects with American cultural organizations and universities to introduce Japanese performing artists and also launched new initiatives, including an artists’ residency project and a workshop series.Known in Japan as a writer/researcher on the public and private arts support systems in the U.S. and Japan, Shioya has been invited to speak at numerous symposia, lectures and TV programs presented by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government, Keidanren, the Academy of Cultural Economics and the Japan Council of Performers' Organizations, among others. In 1998, her first book, New York: How the City and Its Artists Coexist, was published by Maruzen Publishing Co. She has been a regular contributor to arts columns on performing arts and exhibitions for the Asahi newspaper, and has served as a committee member and selection panelist for numerous programs, including The Bessie Awards, Rolex Mentor and Protege International Program, and the Toyota Choreography Awards.

Since 1976, Ivan Sygoda has been a Director of Pentacle, a New York City-based non-profit service organization to which many dance artists outsource administrative functions such as accounting, grant writing and booking. He designed most of Pentacle’s special projects, such as its Help Desk mentoring program; co-founded the New York State DanceForce; contributed to many arts publications; served on numerous panels; lectured widely on aspects of arts administration; and has been on the boards of Dance/USA, NAPAMA, Arts Presenters, the Western Arts Alliance and the New York City Arts Coalition. He has been a member of the New York Dance and Performance Awards (the “Bessies”) selection panel since 1996. He was awarded Dance/USA’s “Ernie” in 1996 and the Arts Presenters Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award in 2000.

Susan Yung oversees the Brooklyn Academy of Music's publications, and is a freelance writer covering dance and art for WNET's Sunday Arts (blog) and Dance Magazine, among others.

MORE BIOS TO COME
Selection Committee for 2011-12 awards: