Dancer, Okpokwasili wins N98.7m Doris Duke award

Contemporary dancer and multidisciplinary performer, Okwui Okpokwasili has won N98.7 million ($275,000) from the 2018 Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Artist Award.  The award is designed to invest in exemplary individual artistes in contemporary dance, jazz, theatre and related interdisciplinary work who have demonstrated their artistic vitality and ongoing commitment to their field. Okpokwasili, who won […]

Contemporary dancer and multidisciplinary performer, Okwui Okpokwasili has won N98.7 million ($275,000) from the 2018 Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Artist Award. 

The award is designed to invest in exemplary individual artistes in contemporary dance, jazz, theatre and related interdisciplinary work who have demonstrated their artistic vitality and ongoing commitment to their field.

Okpokwasili, who won the award for her continued contribution to contemporary dance, will along with six other awardees – Dee Dee Bridgewater, Regina Carter and Stefon Harris for their continuing contributions to jazz; Michelle Dorrance for contemporary dance, and Muriel Miguel and Rosalba Rolón for theatre – receive N89.7million ($250,000) in flexible funding, and an additional N8.9million ($25,000) to encourage contributions to retirement savings.

The Igbo artiste, raised in the Bronx, is a seminal figure in the experimental dance scene in New York and has given her audiences raw, intimate experiences, through her creation of multidisciplinary performances intersecting at theatre, dance and installation art. 

She is reputable for her one-woman performances, and has addressed topics like gender, politics and identity. She has staged site specific shows like her 2017 performance at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art  in response to Nick Cave’s massive installation art, ‘Until.’ 

Okpokwasili collaborated with her husband, Peter Born, on the project “Poor People’s TV Room,” a multi-disciplinary performance piece investigating the tradition of women’s collective action in Nigeria including the Bring Back Our Girls movement and the 1929 Aba Women’s Riots.

In a short film released on Tuesday, the Foundation’s president and CEO, Edward P. Henry who was joined by previous winners, to announce this year’s recipients, said, “we recognize that the arts also are critically important to our communities. And at the heart of the arts is the individual artist. This award frees artists to be artists by providing them with the financial security to take risks and to make great work.”

A 2012 awardee, Eiko Otake, told the new recipients, “This is not a prize for you for what you have done. This is an investment for what you will do.”

The artiste is a multiple recipient of the Bessie Awards, including one in 2014 for the production of ‘Bronx Gothic.’ She is also a 2018 awardee of the United States Artists Award and a 2016 Herb Alpert Award in Dance and has been commissioned for the 2018 Berlin Biennale, among other recognitions.