With a wide range of spoken, signed, and movement languages, the 2023 Dance Magazine Awards celebrated the singular contexts and voices of the awardees.

A tradition dating back to 1954, the awards feature several changes for 2023, including the addition of an annual theme, the establishment of criteria for the selection committee, and the inclusion of posthumous honors to recognize some of the many artists who were not given awards during their lifetimes. 

The same energy that crackles in Maria Torres’ choreography is present whether she is in the classroom, the director’s chair, or gazing toward future projects. Alongside that energy is a technical precision and fierceness that mark her work as grounded, clear-eyed, and vital. And she’s excited to keep sharing those gifts.

For Norton Owen, the director of preservation at Jacob’s Pillow, archives activate a place where the past is in dialogue with the present. Owen’s efforts have helped dance feel like a bigger place, and dance history like an evolving story that unites us all.

A review of Alicia Graf Mack’s first five years at the helm of The Juilliard School’s dance division—she is its youngest and first African American head—reveals that her 2018 appointment was an undeniably historic event. It has signaled a paradigm shift both in terms of race and representation and the school’s pedagogical philosophy.

“Dance saved my life,” says Antoine Hunter PurpleFireCrow. Growing up in Oakland as a deeply creative Black, Indigenous, DeafDisabled person, he experienced artistic frustration and social isolation.

When Bijayini Satpathy dances, the air around her changes. It is something about the intensity of her focus. Everything beyond the world she creates onstage seems to dissolve.

The 2023 Dance Magazine Awards will honor Antoine Hunter, Alicia Graf Mack, Norton Owen, Bijayini Satpathy, and Maria Torres.