2007 Award Announcement

December 28, 2007  It is the pleasure of the Board of Directors of the Choo-San Goh & H. Robert Magee Foundation to announce the recipients of the 2007 Choo-San Goh Awards for Choreography. The recommendation committee included Soonee Lee, Molly Lynch and Janek Schergen, acting as Chairman of the group. There was a large response of applications from a wide spectrum of national and international dance companies.

This year will mark the 21st year since the loss of Choo San Goh and the untimely end to his promising choreographic career. As a choreographer he created for companies as diverse as Washington Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in addition to many others. He created 39 ballets which have, in the last 20 years, been staged throughout the world. This is the original basis of the funding for the Choo San Goh Award for Choreography. Both the ballets he created and the on-going efforts of the Foundation to provide choreographic Awards to other dance makers are the significant legacy that continue in his name.

Singapore Dance Theatre presented an evening in his honor this past September entitled Legacy; In Memory and Tribute. It featured 8 segments of different Choo San Goh ballets plus several contributions from choreographers who have been given the Award in past. Val Caniparoli contributed his Lady of the Camellias pas de deux to the evening and Graham Lustig made a new work for the dancers of SDT especially for the occasion. Guest artists from New York City Ballet, National Ballet of Canada and Compagnia Nacional de Danza in Madrid joined the performance.

This year we are announcing that there will be a change to our present funding process. In future we will be presenting 2 or 3 awards annually. The Awards programme will then come to its final applications with the 20th year in 2012. Applications are solicited annually in April and collected by mid-July each year. The purpose of the grant is the support for newly choreographed works added to a dance company’s repertoire. Funds from the license and performance of Choo-San Goh’s choreographic works are the basis of support for the annual Awards. Over the past fourteen years 85 new works have received sponsorship with a cumulative Awards total of more than $750,000.00.

For questions and information regarding the Awards for Choreography, please contact Janek Schergen at (562) 621-1757 or via

	Award year 2007 recipients Bodyvox Choreographer: Jamey Hampton ($6,000.00) Oregon Ballet Theatre Choreographer: Christopher Stowell ($6,334.00) Dances Patrelle Choreographer Francis Patrelle: ($5,335.00) Tulsa Ballet Theatre Choreographer: Ma Cong ($8,000.00) Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre Choreographer: ($5,772.00)