1
2018 GALA AWARDEES ANGELIQUE POWER (Distinguished Service to The Dance Field Award) As President of the Field Foundation, Angelique catalyzed changes within the Field Foundation grant structure. Nonprofit feedback, foundation peer input, racial justice training, heat maps of Chicago; all of these pieces helped reveal a path forward to a new grant model centered around Community Empowerment through Justice, Art, and Leadership Investment. This new model opens the door to funding for neighborhoods that are too commonly divested in and aims at addressing root causes of the issues allowing every Chicagoan to thrive in this city we love. Power serves on the Forefront Illinois board and also chairs the boards of the Grantmakers in the Arts, 6018North and co-chairs the board of Enrich Chicago, an organization she co-founded, dedicated to racial equity in the arts. SHIRLEY MORDINE (Legacy Award) Shirley Mordine began her early training in San Francisco with Welland Lathrop, Anna Halprin, and the San Francisco Ballet School. She performed with the Welland Lathrop Dance Co. for 10 years. After graduating from Mills College in Oakland, California, she taught at the University of Minnesota for three years and continued her studies with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. Moving to Chicago in 1969 she founded The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and directed it until 1999. Under her direction, The Dance Center evolved into a multifaceted institution at the national forefront of dance education as a teaching, learning, and performing arts center, and its public programming has engaged diverse companies from around the world. In 1969 Mordine founded Mordine & Company Dance Theater, the Midwest's longest-running contemporary dance company, which will celebrate its 50th season beginning in the spring of 2019. As the company’s Artistic Director, Mordine created several seminal works for the Chicago dance scene including Journey, RSVP, and Tongues. She received the first Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Individual Contribution to the field of dance and was honored again in 1994 with a Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement for her groundbreaking work in choreography. Mordine created the prelude work Subject to Change for the Dubufffet sculpture in the landmark Dancin’ in the State event at the State of Illinois Building in 1993. She also created the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s first site- specific work in its new location, Weather Watch. She has been a guest teacher in several colleges and universities and in 2002 was given The Ruth Page Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2005 she was awarded a grant for choreography from The Chicago Dance Makers Forum supported by the Chicago Community Trust. Most recently, Mordine was the recipient of a 2017 International Connections grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support an international and cultural collaboration with Hema Rajagopalan and Astad Daboo in India.
