Eric Cheung receives Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award, while Vanessa Goodman wins Isadora Award

The Dance Centre prizes carry $5,000 in funding for each artist

Eric Cheung. Photo by Abhishek Dhoj Joshi

THE DANCE CENTRE has just announced two winners of its major B.C. awards for choreographers.

Eric Cheung is the recipient of the biennial Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award, while Action at a Distance artistic director Vanessa Goodman receives the annual Isadora Award.

Cheung is a Chinese-Canadian interdisciplinary street-dance artist and choreographer, specializing in popping and incorporating it with other dance styles. He has been a company member of OURO Collective since 2018 and has presented work everywhere from VIVO to The Polygon Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery. He also works in film, theatre, new media, fashion, and VR.

The $5,000 award he receives is intended to assist an emerging artist between 19 and 35 years of age who demonstrates exceptional choreographic potential to produce work at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. Cheung will use the prize money to fund the premiere of his first full-length trio, Contra, this fall. A collaboration with digital media artist Cristian Gonzalez, composer Matthew Tomkinson, and dancers Kinui Oiwa and Tegvaran Sooch, it uses real-time interactive projection mapping and is inspired by the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

Goodman, a past winner of the Garland Award, holds a BFA from SFU. Her contemporary-dance innovations build immersive environments, often using sound and generative movement. Her collaborative works include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw; BLOT with Simona Deaconescu; and pieces with Loscil (Scott Morgan), Brady Marks, and James Proudfoot. Her productions have toured Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America.

Her award, named for dance pioneer Isadora Duncan, recognizes the achievements of B.C.’s dance professionals with $5,000 in funding and access to studio time at the Scotiabank Dance Centre to support the creation of a new work, as well as with a prize sculpture created by renowned glass artist Mary Filer. Previous recipients have included Crystal Pite, Wen Wei Wang, and Margaret Grenier of the Dancers of Damelahamid.

Both artists also won Chrystal Dance Prize—Projects last year.

“I am very pleased that we at The Dance Centre have this opportunity to support the work of Eric, an exciting young artist whose career is just starting to take flight, and to celebrate the achievements of Vanessa, who is one of BC’s most innovative artists,” the centre’s executive director Mirna Zagar said in today’s announcement.

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Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

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