By Nic Corbett
George Washington University Professor of Dance Maida Withers was honored with a special recognition award Wednesday at the 29th annual Mayor’s Arts Awards Ceremony for her work as the founder and artistic director of a dance company that bears her name.
The Maida Withers Dance Construction Company, a not-for-profit arts organization celebrating its 40th season, is known for collaborating with dancers, visual artists, technologists and composers to produce innovative, experimental and complex works. The works, which take on sometimes controversial social and political themes, are performed on stage, at various sites, and in video.
Wearing golden cowboy boots, Ms. Withers—a Columbian College of Arts and Sciences professor who has taught at GW for nearly five decades—graciously accepted her award at Lisner Auditorium.
“Washington has been a receptive place for my work—thank you,” she said. “George Washington University has been a great partner for 49 years. The dancers, musicians, visual artists, all of them, contributed the talent that made it happen.”
The awards, which are the highest honors given by the District of Columbia to recognize artistic excellence and service, were conferred by Mayor Vincent Gray, B.S. ’64, with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities in the categories of Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, Excellence in Service to the Arts, Innovation in the Arts, Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education, Outstanding Emerging Artist and the Mayor's Award for Arts Teaching.
Besides Ms. Withers, others receiving special recognition Wednesday night included: James Billington, the librarian of Congress; Cathy Hughes, chair of Radio One and TV One; Victor Shargai, theater advocate and interior designer of Victor Shargai and Associates Inc.; and Rebecca and Hugo Medrano, founders of GALA Hispanic Theatre.
GW alumnus Garwin Zamora, M.A. '10, a graduate of the university's museum education program in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, was one of three receipients of the mayor's Excellence in Arts Teaching awards.
At the ceremony, the mayor said the honorees, presenters and performers represent the diverse and inclusive spirit of Washington, D.C.
“On any given day, or any given night for that matter, the impact of the creative industry here can be experienced from one neighborhood to the next,” Mayor Gray said. “The power of the arts moves us. As we are entertained, informed, enlightened and inspired, we become better people sharing our newfound consciousness with others.”
The Maida Withers Dance Construction Company emerged out of an artists’ collective she formed in the 1960s with some of her students as part of the post-modern dance revolution, and she applied in 1974 for the company to gain tax-exempt status. Shortly thereafter, she began serving on the board of directors of the Washington Project for the Arts, which connected her with the visual arts community in D.C., opening the door for further collaboration.
A website for the dance company holds the archives of more than 130 works that are catalogued in a timeline. The performances are linked to the more than 500 collaborators that have worked with the company over the years. The company has toured domestically and internationally in Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Korea, Japan, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, France, Venezuela, Poland and Russia, among other countries.
“We are the face of dance in Washington, D.C., through our international tours,” Ms. Withers said in an interview. “It’s nice for us to be able to say to all our international friends that we are honored in our home city, and it gives us credibility there.”
For the 40th-anniversary season, the dance company will be premiering the work MindFluctuations in March at Lisner, which will feature dancers wearing neural headsets that transfer their brain waves to a computer to produce 3D animation based on their emotions.
