BREAKING: Bessie Awards for Darrell Jones and Joanna Kotze, 40 Other Nominations Announced

On a balmy Wednesday afternoon at the Gina Gibney Dance Center's Studio 5-2, two special Bessie Awards were presented to choreographers Darrell Jones and Joanna Kotze.

40 nominations for the upcoming Bessies Awards ceremony (at the Apollo Theater on Monday, October 7) were also announced in the following categories: Outstanding Production, Outstanding Performer, Outstanding Revived Work, Outstanding Visual Design, Outstanding Composition or Sound Design, and Classicalite's favorite Bessie of all...Outstanding Production of a Work Stretching the Boundaries of a Traditional Form.

Paging Mr. Hansen Black?

All the same, the nominees for Outstanding Production of a Work Stretching the Boundaries of a Traditional Form are: Joanna Haigood's Paseo at Dancing in the Streets; Marc Bamuthi Joseph's red, black & GREEN: a blues at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Doug Elkins' Mo(or)town/Redux at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

For his part, Darrell Jones was the recipient of the 2013 Juried Bessie Award--chosen by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Eiko Otake and Jason Samuels Smith--for the shade-throwing, slap-fighting opus, Hoo-Ha (for your eyes only).

Meanwhile, Joanna Kotze won her 2013 Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer thanks to the entropic, Georges Perec-inspired work, It happened it had happened it is happening it will happen.

(And in what might've been the biggest vote of confidence the entire evening, if you'll recall, both the Jones and the Kotze were presented at Danspace Project.)

Classicalite will post the full Bessie list of noms later this week. Until then, you might want to check out this video from The Invisible Dog's Bessie-nominated piece, The People to Come.

Established in 1983 by David White at Dance Theater Workshop, the New York Dance and Performance Awards (or The Bessies, in honor of dancer/teacher Bessie Schönberg), acknowledge outstanding creative work by independent artists in the fields of choreography, performance, music composition, visual design and others areas of dance and performance. The award recipients are chosen by The Bessie Selection Committee, which consists of artists, dance presenters, producers, journalists, critics and academics.