On January 20, one of the most prestigious awards in the world of dance, “The Bessie,” the New York Dance and Performance Awards for Lifetime Achievement in 2024 and 2025, was presented to African American dancer/educator Dyane Harvey-Salaam and choreographer Garth Fagan, founder of the critically acclaimed Garth Fagan Dance Company. They were among a number of artists presented with Bessies for outstanding choreographer/creator, performer, sound design or music composition, visual design, outstanding revival, and breakout choreographer — an award that honors an artist who has made an exceptional leap in their career in the last couple of years. These also included an award for Outstanding Service to the Field to Ballet Tech (1978), under the leadership of Principal Veronica York and Artistic Director Dionne Figgins, with the Bessies applauding that organization’s “commitment to excellence, inclusivity, access, and community” that has shaped the lives of its young students and strengthened the future of dance with an education program dedicated to training the next generation of dancers serving thousands of students in grades 4 through 8.
Some of this year’s bessie winners. (Image courtesy of The Bessies)
An award for Outstanding Revival went to Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring” (1975), which filled the massive Park Avenue Armory with the power of Black bodies in motion via its elemental staging on a soil-covered floor for this riveting, masterful, and unforgettable revival. The work’s breath, presence, and ferocity were guided with exceptional care by charismatic Senegalese dancer/choreographer Germaine Acogny and Malou Airaudo and restaged by Josephine Ann Endicott, Jorge Puerta Armenta, and Clémentine Deluy, honoring Bausch’s choreography with rigor even as it ignited it anew.
Dionne Figgins, Artistic Director, with Maggie Christ, Executive Director, at Ballet Tech
(Steven Pisano photos)
The Bessie awarded to Garth Fagan cited his thrillingly distinctive choreographic style and artistry that manifests humanity even as he was also praised for a familiarly infectious technique that has dazzled audiences for decades with its deft ability to thread jazz’s polyrhythms through the specificities of Afro-Caribbean, modern dance, and ballet forms. Jamaica-born Fagan’s world-class dance company, initially founded in the 1970s as “Bottom of the Bucket BUT… Dance Theater”, has experienced a few name changes over the years, even as it consistently wowed audiences with its ensemble of incomparably kinetic dancers. Able to suspend themselves in eternal balances and levitate without preparation, the company’s artists reveal the intricacy of Fagan’s mind, ultimately inspiring him for over five and a half decades. Fagan’s choreography, a reflection of an artistic legacy that includes Ivy Baxter and the Jamaican National Dance Company, Pearl Primus and Lavinia Williams, as well as Martha Graham, José Limón, Mary Hinkson, and Alvin Ailey, has enthralled audiences from the groundbreaking Griot NY created in collaboration with Wynton Marsalis, to Julie Taymor’s “Lion King,” ballets for Dance Theater of Harlem, NYC Ballet, and countless concert halls all over the world.
The other Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Dyane Harvey-Salaam, was cited for a career noted for melding dance, theater, and the profound embodiment of an artist’s way of being. Her presence was described as 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 has taught generations the endless power of art both through her performances, her courses at Hofstra and Princeton Universities and in her invaluable collaborations with husband Abdel R. Salaam, Artistic Director of the nation’s preeminent Dance Africa celebrations. Beyond the studio and stage, Harvey-Salaam’s 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, The Bessies Harvey-Salaam’s honor highlighted “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.”
Gina Gibney (Steven Pisano photos)
The AmNews recently spoke with Harvey-Salaam about her career as she covered a wide range of topics sparked by the impressive biography of this charismatic performer who has appeared nationally and internationally with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Joan Miller’s Dance Players, Chuck Davis Dance Company, Walter Nicks Dance Company, Otis Sallid’s New Art Ensemble, George Faison’s Universal Dance Experience in his extraordinary works “Poppies” and “Slaves”, Dance Brazil, and The Repertory Dance Theatre of Trinidad and Tobago. A plethora of other performances have taken her to Broadway and beyond in such spectacular productions as “The Wiz” (Broadway and original film), “Timbuktu!” in the original cast as understudy for dancer Eleanor McCoy, who performed the role of Eartha Kitt’s handservant in a cast that included the phenomenal dancer Miguel Godreau. There were also memories of performing in Ntozake Shange’s “Spell #7,” “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God” (Paris, France Company), Alvin Ailey Celebrates Ellington (CBS Special), “Free To Dance” (PBS Special), and FESTAC ’77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria. Harvey-Salaam spoke of lessons learned and wisdom shared with students, while also ruminating on the integral role African Americans and dance along the African Diaspora have played in the evolution of the artform. And, of course, she spoke of a life made all the richer by a family that includes husband Abdel, daughter Khisekh, and granddaughters Kayla and Jasmine. “My position vis-à-vis Dance Africa is as Abdel’s Assistant,” Harvey-Salaam says modestly, adding, “I’m not his producer, that’s Charmaine Warren (who also writes about Dance for the Amsterdam News). I’m the other ear, the other eye, the other mind he can rely on.” Chuckling, she adds, “My sister laughingly calls me FLODA, the First Lady of DanceAfrica.” Of course the production has its own rehearsal director and other key staff but clearly what she and Abdel have is a partnership, Harvey-Salaam says of the man she’s known since the early 1970s when the world was peopled by such giants as Chuck Davis, founder of the DanceAfrica festival, such Black Arts Movement phenomena as The Last Poets, Nikki Giovanni, and choreographers whose work spoke volumes like Fred Benjamin, Rod Rodgers, Eleo Pomare, Martial Roumain, Shawneequa Baker-Scott, and others whose names find their way into Harvey-Salaam’s colorful memories of a career that spans some of the most vibrant decades in the history of the artform. But what also finds its way into her discussion of rich lived experience is a wisdom about dance and the dance of life that is a beautiful illustration of why she was more than deserving of The Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award.
When reflecting on a career that began with being mesmerized at 5 years old by the sight of New York City Ballet’s Arthur Mitchell and Maria Tallchief performing “The Nutcracker” on television and took her down many roads, Harvey-Salaam says, “When you try to define something, whether its ballet or African Dance, my new go-to place is simply movement, its movement. Even when you try to define something as African dance, at a certain point it is simply movement. Of course, young people need to be empowered by the legacy, the civilizations, and the cultural practices, but once they get it and they’re empowered by it, they can just let it go. They’re no longer studying it; they are it. They embody it. I’m hoping that’s where I am in my evolution.”
A full list of the outstanding artists presented with The Bessies awards can be found at bessies.org.