Here Are the 2026 Dance Magazine Award Honorees

Here Are the 2026 Dance Magazine Award Honorees This year’s Dance Magazine Awards will honor Germaine Acogny; Ayodele Casel; Final Bow for Yellowface; Cleo Parker Robinson; and Alice Sheppard. The Lydia Joel Award—named in honor of former Dance Magazine editor Lydia Joel, and recognizing behind-the-scenes dance leaders—will go to Alicia Adams, formerly of the Kennedy Center. The Harkness Promise Awards, presented in collaboration with the Harkness Foundation for Dance and offering a grant and rehearsal space for innovative young choreographers, will go to Jasmine Hearn and Keerati Jinakunwiphat. Posthumous awards will celebrate five artists—Balasaraswati, Choo San Goh, Steve Paxton, Eleo Pomare, and Charles H. Williams—who were not recognized by the awards committee during their lifetimes. A tradition dating back to 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards now feature an annual theme. This year’s is “Artists/Activists,” celebrating dancers and dancemakers whose practice and advocacy are deeply intertwined. Our 2026 honorees not only exemplify creative excellence, but have also helped shape communities, institutions, and cultural discourse. Join us in New York City at The Ailey Citigroup Theater at The Joan Weill Center for Dance on Monday, November 23, 7 pm EST, for an evening of performances and tributes for each honoree. Find tickets at Dance Media’s online store. Dance Magazine Awards GERMAINE ACOGNY, French Senegalese dancer, choreographer, and teacher, is regarded as the mother of contemporary African dance. From 1977 until 1982 she was artistic director of the school Mudra Afrique, Dakar (created by Maurice Béjart and Senegal president Léopold Sédar Senghor). Since then, she has become an emissary of African dance and culture, dancing, choreographing, and teaching all over the world. She developed a certified modern African dance technique, and together with her husband, Helmut Vogt, she is the founder of École des Sables, the international center for traditional and contemporary African dances. Her awards include the Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honour of the French Republic (2016); Golden Lion, Venice Biennale (2021); Grand Prix de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts for Choreography (2023); and Bessie Awards for choreographing Fagaala (2007) and for dancing in My Black Chosen One (2018). AYODELE CASEL is an internationally acclaimed tap dancer, choreographer, and writer celebrated for her deeply expressive and narrative-driven works. A Doris Duke Artist and one of The New York Times’ “Biggest Breakout Stars of 2019,” Casel has consistently expanded the language of tap dance to explore identity, culture, and legacy. Born in the Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, she has created several acclaimed works, including Chasing Magic (Bessie Award), While I Have the Floor, Diary of a Tap Dancer, and The Remix. Casel served as tap choreographer for Broadway’s Funny Girl, earning a Drama Desk nomination. She co-directed, produced, and story-edited Rooted, a PBS ALL ARTS film, featuring Sherrilyn Ifill and a dynamic group of artists reflecting on history through performance, which received a 2025 New York Emmy Award nomination. In 2021, her image was featured on a U.S. Postal Service Forever Stamp commemorating tap dance. Casel is also a Radcliffe Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, a Herb Alpert Award winner, and co-director of Operation: Tap and Dance Lab New York’s Tap Dance Project. She currently serves on the board of New York City Center. FINAL BOW FOR YELLOWFACE Phil Chan (co-founder) is a choreographer, director, producer, and writer, as well as president of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He serves as resident choreographer at Oakland Ballet, and recent projects include directing Madama Butterfly for Boston Lyric Opera, staging a reimagined La Bayadère for Indiana University, and producing the acclaimed Asian-choreography festivals 10,000 Dreams. A graduate of Carleton College, Chan has taught at Carleton, Harvard University, and Fordham University. He is the author of Final Bow for Yellowface and Banishing Orientalism, received the 2024 Dance/NYC Dance Advocacy Award, and was named a Kennedy Center Next 50 leader. He and Pazcoguin are also the subjects of the award-winning documentary About Face. Georgina Pazcoguin (co-founder), the unapologetic force known as “The Rogue Ballerina,” is a former New York City Ballet soloist redefining cultural leadership on and off the stage. Alongside Phil Chan, she co-founded Final Bow for Yellowface, radically driving equity and representation across performing arts. Named a Kennedy Center Next 50 leader, her dynamic career spans starring on Broadway (CATS), producing a Broadway show (Here Lies Love), and serving on the Tony Award nominating committee. Author of the no-holds-barred memoir Swan Dive, Pazcoguin is currently an executive MBA candidate in the Global Leaders Institute Cohort of 2026–27. CLEO PARKER ROBINSON is founder and artistic director of the 56-year-old Denver-based artistic institution Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, which includes the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, the second company Cleo II, two training-track youth ensembles, a dance academy with a BA-degree affiliation, an international summer dance institute, and numerous community-outreach programs. CPRD’s home in the 100-year-old Shorter Building expanded in January 2026 with the opening of a 25,000-square-foot state-of-the-art extension, an ADA-accessible facility with four new studios, a theater, meeting spaces, and administrative facilities. Robinson’s lifetime of work in dance, evidence-based somatic movement therapy, education, and community outreach includes nearly 30 choreographed works, with a common theme of social justice and the human condition. “Cleo Parker Robinson is at the intersection of social justice and the performing arts,” says Denver attorney and CPRD supporter Skip Netzorg. Robinson has received honors and awards from corporate, civic, community, and artistic entities worldwide. ALICE SHEPPARD is the founder and artistic director of the disability arts organization Kinetic Light, internationally recognized for a decade of innovation in dance, disability arts, and equitable access practices and technology. Engaging with disability arts, culture, and history, Sheppard’s work attends to the complex intersections of disability, gender, and race. With Kinetic Light, Sheppard choreographs and creates immersive worlds on stage and screen that emerge from her understanding of disabled expression and aesthetics. She is a United States Artists, MacDowell, and Disability Futures fellow; a UCLA Regents’ Lecturer; and a winner of a Bessie Award and NCCAkron’s Knight Choreography Prize. Sheppard is also a sought-after speaker and an independent arts researcher whose writing on dance, access, and disability has appeared in The New York Times, peer-reviewed essay collections, and academic journals. Lydia Joel Award ALICIA ADAMS founded the arts consultancy and production company URUCUM Global Arts in 2025 to present today’s most exceptional talents and to create an arts ecosystem open to exchanges with scientists and environmentalists. Previously, Adams served for more than 30 years as vice president of international programming and dance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where she distinguished herself through innovative arts programming and visionary curation of the Kennedy Center’s contemporary dance program. She orchestrated landmark international festivals showcasing some of the greatest performing and visual artists from countries throughout the world, while also championing emerging artists, some of whom went on to become famous in their own right. In 2023, she launched an international festival series to bring together the arts and sciences as they relate to the environment. Before arriving in Washington, DC, in 1992, Adams held leadership positions at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Center, and Harlem School of the Arts. Her honors include the APAP William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence, the APAP Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award, and the Dance Lab Honors, among many others. Harkness Promise Awards JASMINE HEARN is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, teacher, doula, dancer, collaborator, performer, and organizer. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2025, Hearn’s other honors include two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performer. They have collaborated with Bill T. Jones, Solange Knowles, Okwui Okpokwasili, Marjani Forté-Saunders, and Bebe Miller, and with dance companies including Urban Bush Women, Hélène Simoneau Danse, and David Dorfman Dance. KEERATI JINAKUNWIPHAT is a choreographer, performing artist, and movement director. A Dance Magazine “25 to Watch” artist for 2021, she earned a 2023 Princess Grace Award in choreography, and was a 2024 artist in residence at Baryshnikov Arts, where she premiered her debut evening-length work, Of Dishes and Dreams. She was a 2025–26 artist in residence at the 92NY’s Harkness Dance Center and was named a Caroline Hearst choreographer in residence at Princeton University for the 2026–27 season. Posthumous Awards Posthumous Dance Magazine Awards will pay tribute to bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati; ballet choreographer Choo San Goh; postmodern innovator Steve Paxton; modern dancer and choreographer Eleo Pomare; and dance educator and director Charles H. Williams. Stay tuned for Dance Magazine’s November/December issue to learn more about each of these artists and how they have shaped the dance field.