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The 2024 Dance Magazine Awards honor Bard alumna Joanna Haigood ’79, alongside George Faison, Liz Lerman, Mavis Staines, Shen Wei, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose work with Baryshnikov Arts earned him the Chairman’s Award. From its first year in 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards have been given annually in appreciation of the artistry, integrity, and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers. The theme for this year’s awards is “the stage and beyond”—the dancers, choreographers, and educators recognized are invested in work that often transcends the proscenium.

“Since 1980 Joanna Haigood has been creating work that uses natural, architectural, and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative,” says the Dance Magazine Awards statement. “Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Her work has been commissioned by many arts institutions, including Dancing in the Streets, Jacob’s Pillow, the Walker Art Center, the National Black Arts Festival, and Festival d’Avignon. Haigood has had the privilege to mentor many extraordinary young artists at the École Nationale des Arts du Cirque, the Trinity Laban Conservatoire, Spelman College, Stanford University, the San Francisco Circus Center, and Zaccho Studio.”

Professor An-My Lê’s photographs are featured in the New York Times Opinion piece “The Price,” which is part of the Times series “On the Brink” about the modern threat of nuclear weapons. “The Price” covers the United States’ $1.7 trillion overhaul of its nuclear arsenal and its impact on American communities. Lê’s photographs show the infrastructure of the US military, including the inside of nuclear facilities and the people working inside them. They illustrate the tension that writer W. J. Hennigan describes: “Congress decided that America needed new weapons… but it’s clear, after I visited these places, that the American people have not.”

Lê is a professor of photography whose work has covered war’s impact on culture and the environment for over 30 years. Her past projects have been exhibited in solo shows at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others.

The Sunday Times profiled Bard alumna Gia Coppola ’09, whose feature film The Last Showgirl premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The film, which stars Pamela Anderson, follows a showgirl who has to reconsider her life when her show closes. Coppola told the Times that the film came together like a “divine intervention,” particularly Anderson’s casting, of whom Coppola said “no one else could be this character.”

Coppola studied photography at Bard and got her start shooting films for fashion brands. She moved on to assist the costume departments in family films before eventually making her first movie, Palo Alto, in 2013. She also recently shot short film-ads for jewelry company Mejuri. Throughout many of her projects, especially her newest film, she is interested in “how society confines women in all different generations.”

Brandon Blackwood ’13, Bard alumnus and designer, has been named in TIME magazine’s TIME100 Next list for 2024, which highlights influential figures who are shaping the future of business, entertainment, sports, politics, science, health, and other fields. “As one of few preeminent Black designers, Blackwood represents changemakers who lead by example with fearlessness, innovation, and a steadfast embrace of inclusivity,” writes Elaine Welteroth for TIME. “His influence extends beyond the runway, inspiring a new generation of designers to merge style with substance. The B on his bags not only honors their namesake—it also reflects his brilliance across every design, collection, and work of art he offers to this world.”

Bard alumni/ae Rosa Polin ’16 and Ryan Rusiecki ’20, graduates of the photography program, have been featured in Cultured magazine’s Young Photographers 2024, a list highlighting the next generation of image makers who have dedicated themselves to photography as an art form. “I try to use photography the same way I try to live the rest of my life,” said Polin ’16, who blends realism and the uncanny in intimate imagery. “I am trying to find my voice. It’s all a big mixture of shame, curiosity, fear, playfulness, boredom, irony, sadness, lust, humor, and empathy.” For his environmental photography, Rusiecki ’20 has revisited the same subject each year, watching its transformation under imminent threat. “The subject of my practice — the Hudson River estuary — is a globally rare habitat that is under threat by rising sea levels and climate change,” he said. “I have only been able to photograph the estuary after having spent four years of repeated return, and multidisciplinary research, to understand its nuances and visual fragility. I consider the estuary a friend.”

Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College artist and collaborator Justin Vivian Bond is named a recipient of a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship. One of this year’s 22 recipients of the prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Justin Vivian Bond, an artist and performer, has a long relationship with the Fisher Center and Bard College. They curated and hosted the Spiegeltent season for five years (2014–2018), and continue to return as a performer each summer to sold-out audiences. They have taught in Bard’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program, and have received developmental support from Fisher Center LAB on multiple projects. MacArthur Fellows receive $800,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit.

In a statement about their work, the MacArthur Foundation says, “Justin Vivian Bond (Viv) is an artist and performer working in the cabaret tradition weaving history, cultural critique, and an ethic of care into performances and artworks animated by wit, whimsy, and calls to action. Bond uses cabaret to explore the political and cultural ethos of the moment and tie it back to history to address contemporary challenges, in particular those facing queer communities. Bond’s decades-long journey across the landscape of gender has both informed their artistic practices and played a significant role in ongoing conversations around gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights.”

Justin Vivian Bond studied theater at Adelphi University (1981–1985) and received an MA (2005) from Central Saint Martins College, London. They have taught performance at New York University and Bard College and held a long-term residency at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater (New York). Bond has appeared on stage at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Vienna Staatsoper, among others. They are the author of a memoir, Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels (2011), and their art has been exhibited at The New Museum, VITRINE (London), and Participant, Inc. (New York).