The Dance Centre has announced that Serge Bennathan has just received the Isadora Award for excellence in dance, while Julianne Chapple has won the biennial Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award.

Bennathan, whose award recognizes the contribution to dance of established artists, was the artistic director of Toronto’s Dancemakers from 1990 to 2006, returning to Vancouver after that to found Les Productions Figlio. His accomplishments include The Invisible Life of Joseph Finch, a 2007 play he created with actor Jonathon Young;The Strange Adventure of Myself, a solo performance for Sylvain Senez in 2009; and Elles, winner of the 2012 Rio Tinto Alcan Award. Bennathan is also a writer, and is active in opera and theatre as well as dance.

Bennathan will receive an Isadora Award sculpture, designed by glass artist Mary Filer, plus fully subsidized rehearsal space at the Scotiabank Dance Centre to the value of $1,000, and $500 cash. 

Julianne Chapple's surreal, often genre-melding choreography has been seen at the EDAM Dance Series, Dancing on the Edge, Dances for a Small Stage, Festival Launch, 12 Minutes Max, Drift Arts Festival, SWARM Art Walk , and elsewhere, including Ireland's Tipperary Dance Festival and Berlin's Nah Dran. Most recently, she created a new work in residence at EDAM and was artist-in-residence at the Dance Centre for the 2015-16 season. She is also coproducer and occasional curator of a small experimental performance series titled Shooting Gallery Performance.

The Garland prize, named in memory of a pioneering educator at SFU's dance program, provides Chapple with $5,000 to assist with producing a work at the Scotiabank Dance Centre (in this case, Chapple's premiere of Suf(fix), her first full-length work, in 2018).