Radical System Art's Shay Kuebler wins Barney Commissioning Prize from Portland's White Bird
Choreographer to create new project called Ghost Scripts with $15,000 prize from respected American contemporary-dance presenter
Shay Kuebler receiving his award last night. Photo courtesy Shay Kuebler
Aiden Cass and Sarah Hutton in Momentum of Isolation. Photo by David Cooper
RADICAL SYSTEM ART founder and artistic director Shay Kuebler has become only the third Canadian to win a prestigious contemporary-dance award from Portland’s respected White Bird organization.
He won the Barney Commissioning Prize during a ceremony on October 4 as part of White Bird’s Founders Fête Fundraising Event at the Portland Art Museum’s Field Sunken Ballroom.
Kuebler receiving the award from White Bird’s Paul King and Walter Jaffe.
The US$15,000 prize will go toward a new dance work called Ghost Scripts. The Holy Body Tattoo and Marie Chouinard are the only other Canadian artists to have ever won the award. Other recipients include major American names in dance, such as Alonzo King (for People of the Forest), Mark Morris (Rondo), and Kyle Abraham (An Untitled Love).
The prize is named after Paul King and Walter Jaffe’s white Goffin cockatoo, the bird who inspired the name of the well-known contemporary-dance presenting organization.
White Bird’s 2022-23 season featured Radical System Art’s Momentum of Isolation, a multilayered exploration of loneliness that met with enthusiastic reviews.
Edmonton-born Kuebler has had a critically acclaimed role on the Vancouver dance scene for more than two decades. He's known for the hypercharged physicality of his dance, which seamlessly mixes his wide variety of training—including martial arts, hip-hop, jazz, contemporary, neo-classical ballet, and tap. Last March, he made his debut with a commission from Ballet BC called FIRST/LAST. As a dancer, he’s performed with such celebrated Vancouver companies as Kidd Pivot and Holy Body Tattoo.
Related Articles
