The Place Prize, the largest dance competition in Europe, funded twenty choreographers to make new work with full production, technical and rehearsal facilities and has distributed £100,000 in cash awards to winning choreographers, including the top award of £25,000. The competition will be held every other year, and is open to choreographers working in Britain in any contemporary style.
The winner was chosen by a panel of judges from five finalists: Rafael Bonachela, Rosemary Butcher, Tom Roden & Pete Shenton, Hofesh Shechter and Bawren Tavaziva. The judges also awarded special prizes of £1000 to all five finalists. The nightly audience-voted prizes of £1000 awarded Bonachela £5000 and Shechter £5000 over the run of Finals performances.
Bonachela also won Bloomberg CHOICE, a prize voted for by Bloomberg users who watched video extracts of the finalists’ work on their Bloomberg terminals. As winner, Bonachela and his dancers Lee Clayden and Antonia Grove receive an expenses-paid trip to New York.
Rafael Bonachela was selected for the finals as the most popular choreographer of the original twenty, voted for by the semi-finals’ audiences, the remaining four pieces were selected by the judges. The panel of judges comprises Iwona Blazwick, Director of Whitechapel Art Gallery; Guy Cools, Artistic Director, Fondation Jean-Pierre Perrault, Montreal; Keith Khan, Chief Executive of Rich Mix; David R White, independent arts producer and Consulting Producer-at-Large, Dance Theatre Workshop, New York; and Jan Younghusband, Commissioning Editor, Arts and Performance, Channel 4; chaired by John Ashford, Theatre Director at The Place.