On Monday 19 February, the winners of the 18th National Dance Awards will be announced at a ceremony at London’s Barbican Centre which will be live-streamed live on the National Dance Awards Facebook page from 12:50PM.
This year’s awards will be hosted by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, multi-award winning choreographer and previous National Dance Awards winner for best classical choreography for Scottish Ballet’s A Streetcar Named Desire in 2012, and Dane Hurst, Founder and Artistic Director of the Moving Assembly Project who in 2013 was named Best Male Dancer at the National Dance Awards.
The event will also play host to the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement and the One Dance UK Industry Award, given in memory of Jane Attenborough.
Graham Watts OBE, chairman of the Dance Section, said, “these short-listed nominees come from a longlist of almost 500 dancers, choreographers, other creatives and companies nominated by professional dance critics, during 2016/17.
"I am especially pleased with the diversity of this year’s nominations list, covering ballet, contemporary, dance theatre, flamenco, hip-hop, kathak and musical theatre.
"It is a remarkable testament to the diversity of dance in Britain that the 43 individuals nominated originate from 21 countries... I wonder where else in the world “national” awards for dance would spread so far across the globe?
"There are a few welcome firsts amongst this year’s nominations: a composer [Vincenzo Lamagna] is nominated as an Emerging Artist; a musical theatre ensemble [42nd Street] is nominated for Outstanding Company; a Syrian refugee (Mithkal Alzghair) is nominated for the outstanding male performance (modern); and the same choreographer (Crystal Pite) receives two nominations in the Outstanding Classical Choreography Award.
"The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet top the list with eight nominations, apiece, followed by Scottish Ballet and HeadSpace Dance with five each, Arthur Pita has four nominations; Boy Blue Entertainment and the Flamenco Festival [3 each] and Michael Clark Company, New Adventures, Northern Ballet, Rosie Kay Dance Company and Vincent Dance Theatre [all with 2 nominations, each].
"For the second successive year, an Akram Khan production garners the most nominations with four for Akram Khan’s Giselle for English National Ballet, although this year that distinction is shared with HeadSpaceDance’s Stepmother/Stepfather, and Boy Blue Entertainment’s Blak Whyte Gray follows closely with three nominations. Other productions with more than one nomination are: Crystal Pite’s Emergence for Scottish Ballet and her Flight Pattern for The Royal Ballet, plus Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes.
"The Emerging Artist category is the most diverse yet with a composer, a choreographer, two contemporary dance artists and a ballet dancer.”