Media Release
For immediate release
February 9, 2006
Emerging B.C. choreographer wins Banff Centre’s 2006 Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award
British Columbia-based choreographer Simone Orlando will receive The Banff Centre’s 2006 Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award, one of the most important awards given to emerging Canadian choreographers. As part of the award, Orlando will create a new dance work for the Centre’s Professional Dance Program, which will receive its world premiere as part of Festival Dance during the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival.
“Simone Orlando is a perfect representative of the level of innovative choreographer that the Clifford E. Lee Award was created to honour and encourage,” says John Murrell, executive artistic director, Performing Arts, at The Banff Centre. “Her contributions as a dancer and teacher are numerous and inspirational. Now the Lee Award program will facilitate her ongoing development as a choreographer of significant impact.”
Annette av Paul, program director of Summer Dance at the Centre says, “It has been very stimulating to follow Simone Orlando’s career as a dancer, and, over the last few years, also as a choreographer. It is with great anticipation that we welcome her as this year’s Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award Winner. Her mature and sensitive ideas, her musicality, her choices of movement and space, show great vision, and I look forward to presenting her work at the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival.”
Orlando has been dancing professionally since 1989, first with the National Ballet of Canada, then Desrosiers Dance Theatre, two summers with The Banff Centre’s Professional Dance Program and, since 1996, with Ballet British Columbia. She has created new works for Ballet Kelowna, Ballet BC’s Mentor Program, Arts Umbrella, and Chimère, a dance film supported by Bravo!fact. In addition to her performing, Ms. Orlando is currently a rehearsal director for the Ballet BC Mentor Program, and she teaches at the Flora Pigeau Academy of Dance and the North Shore Academy of Dance.
“Having participated as a dancer in the Professional Dance Program in 1996 and 1997, I have had the opportunity to work with previous Clifford E. Lee Award recipients, Joe Laughlin and Shawn Hounsell,” Orlando says. “As a dancer, this experience was invaluable. I learned so much about movement and the creative process. As excited and honoured as I am to create a new work at The Banff Centre this summer, I am also overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility that I have to the dancers.”
The Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award, administered annually by The Banff Centre to an emerging Canadian choreographer, was established in 1978 by the Clifford E. Lee Foundation. The award provides a choreographer with a six-week residency at The Banff Centre to create a new dance work, as well as a $5000 cash award. Past recipients include Mark Godden, Christopher House, Bengt Jörgen, Sabrina Matthews, Crystal Pite, Peter Quanz, Wen Wei Wang, and D.A. Hoskins.
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Print-ready, downloadable photo of Simone Orlando.
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Media Contacts | |
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Jill Sawyer Media and Communications Officer The Banff Centre 403.762.6475 |
Pam Challoner
Writer/Editor The Banff Centre 403-762-6707 |