Two boundary-breaking artists have won two top local dance awards.

Julia Taffe, artistic director of the high-flying Aeriosa company, which just performed Second Nature at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, is receiving the Isadora Award for Excellence in Dance in recognition of her contribution to BC’s dance scene. Meanwhile, Justine A. Chambers, known for interactive works in nontraditional spaces, has scored the Lola Award for a mid-career or senior artist who shows an adventurousness, a willingness to push the form, and a penchant for collaborative, interdisciplinary work.

Taffe, a certified ACMG Rock Guide, has choreographed more than 25 works, many of them at gravity defying locations, from Stawamus Chief Mountain to  Taipei City Hall and Toronto’s 58-storey L Tower. Her work is a unique meld of contemporary dance, acrobatics, and rock climbing, often with environmental  or natural themes. Her works include the treetop-set Pseudotsuga – Earth to Sky in Stanley Park and In Situ high upon the Vancouver Public Library building downtown.

Taffe receives an Isadora Award sculpture designed by glass artist Mary Filer, fully subsidized rehearsal space at Scotiabank Dance Centre to the value of $1000, and $500 cash. The award, named after dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, was instituted by The Dance Centre in 1999.

Justine A Chambers is a founding member of projet bk, was associate artist at the Dance Centre from 2015 to 2017, and was artist in residence at artist-run centre 221a in 2017. Chambers is one of three artists selected for the Yulanda Faris Choreographers Program, and was the recipient of the Chrystal Dance Prize in 2016. Her works include The Choreography Walk, inspired by the Soundwalk and sending participants on a two-hour silent walk through Vancouver, with eight fleeting choreographic happening en route; Family Dinner, in which small audiences dined with members of the arts scene, who’d been coached to intervene in the meal with various planned gestures; and COPY, an interdisciplinary installation exploring mimicry, duplication, and degeneration that integrated performers, live-feed audio and video, and modified open-source software. 

Her $10,000 award is supported by the Lola McLaughlin Endowment Fund with the Vancouver Foundation and administered by The Dance Centre.