The New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards announced the 2024 and 2025 award recipients at the 41st Bessie Awards Ceremony in New York City. Winners include current Princeton faculty member Dyane Harvey-Salaam, recent Princeton Arts Fellow yuniya edi kwon, and Omari Wiles, Shamel Pitts, Amy Hall Garner, and Ronald K. Brown, who are all either current or recent Caroline Hearst Choreographers-in-Residence in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Dance.
The Bessie Awards were on hiatus during 2024 as it restructured toward independent nonprofit status. The awards presented on January 20 considered performances presented between April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2025, as eligible for consideration.
Dyane Harvey-Salaam (Photo by Jon Sweeney)
Lecturer in Dance Dyane Harvey-Salaam was recognized with a top honor of the night—the 2024 Lifetime Achievement in Dance Award. The award citation notes:
“For a lifetime of extraordinary rituals melding dance, theatre, and the profound embodiment of an artist’s way of being. Her presence is a lighthouse, guiding artists toward refuge, courage, and inspiration. As the devoted holder and répétiteur of Eleo Pomare’s work, she safeguards what came before while illuminating what is still possible. Through unwavering generosity and resolve, she teaches us the endless power of persistence and the art of never giving up.”
“Beyond the studio, her impact radiates through quiet, consistent leadership mentoring artists toward their own authority, sharpening their craft while protecting their spirit. She holds space for complexity and keeps the path lit when the road is uncertain, reminding us that endurance is not an accident but a practice. In honoring her, we honor a lifetime of disciplined care, the rare artist who preserves the past without freezing it, and who insists, again and again, that what is possible is still unfolding.”
Harvey-Salaam teaches the foundational course “The American Experience and Dance Practices of the African Diaspora” twice each year for the Program in Dance. She was also nominated for a 2024 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer for her work in Purple: A Ritual In Nine Spells with Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, which was presented at Clark Theater at Lincoln Center.
yuniya edi kwon (Photo by Felicity Audet)
Recent 2023-25 Princeton Arts Fellow yuniya edi kwon won the 2024 Award for Outstanding Sound Design or Musical Composition for Boy mother/faceless bloom, created with Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl of Degenerate Art Ensemble. The Bessies call the interdisciplinary work “immersive and transformative….an expansive, otherworldly experience.”
Ronald K. Brown, a 2022-23 Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence, was given the 2025 Award for Outstanding Revival for Grace (1999), created for and performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at New York City Center. “This collective prayer is precise, ecstatic, and fiercely human, carrying dancers through joy, struggle, and release with undiminished power and heightened relevance,” notes the awards committee. He taught the fall 2022 course, “Dance Performance Workshop: Repertory I,” and set an excerpt of his work, Four Corners (2014), on a cast of 12 Princeton students for the 2022 Princeton Dance Festival.
Shamel Pitts (Photo by Jon Sweeney)
A Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence in 2023-24 at Princeton University, Shamel Pitts earned a 2024 Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator for Touch of Red, presented at New York Live Arts. The Bessie Awards committee describes Touch of Red as “a viscerally charged work where physical rigor meets emotional intimacy.” As a visiting lecturer in dance in fall 2023, Pitts worked with Princeton students to present his new work, bubbles, at the Princeton Dance Festival at Berlind Theatre.
Amy Hall Garner, a Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence in 2023-24, won the 2025 Bessie Award for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer. The committee praises Garner for proving “how invention and imagination cultivates form.” She created a new contemporary ballet work for a cast of 16 Princeton students for the 2023 Dance Festival and will be a guest artist with the Program in Dance this spring.
Omari Wiles (Photo by Jon Sweeney)
Current Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence Omari Wiles won a 2025 Award for Outstanding Chorographer/Creator, along with Arturo Lyons, for CATS: The Jellicle Ball at Perelman Performing Arts Center. The Bessies describe their choreography for CATS as “an unmatched synthesis of Ballroom Culture and Musical-Theater mayhem.” For this year’s Princeton Dance Festival, Wiles created the new vogue and house work Acting Brand New. The Princeton student performers, who learned to tap into new “vogue-cabulary” and use it to expand their self-expression, explored movements referencing Queer LGBTQ+ night life.
Established in 1984, The Bessies are New York City’s premier dance awards. According to the organization, they “recognize groundbreaking work in choreography, performance, music composition, visual design, legacy, and service to the field of dance.” An independent Selection Committee of dance industry professionals nominates artists for each award.
Read the full news release from The Bessies
Feature Image: Princeton students perform “Run to the Edge” choreographed by Amy Hall Garner on Nov. 30, 2023. Photo by Larry Levanti
