Philip Szporer awarded Jacqueline Lemieux Prize

>> by Brittany Duggan

The Canada Council for the Arts recently announced Philip Szporer as the recipient of the 2010 Jacqueline Lemieux Prize. A Montréal-based dance writer, filmmaker and lecturer, Szporer has been an active member in the Canadian dance scene for over thirty years. A former dance columnist for Radio-Canada's cultural magazine, Aux arts, etc., Szporer’s work has been published in Hour, ballettanz and The Dance Current, among others. In 2001 he co-founded, with artist Marlene Miller, Mouvement Perpétuel, a video production company specializing in arts documentaries. Together, they have co-directed and produced several projects including Moments in Motion, Byron Chief-Moon: Grey Horse Rider and Butte, a Bravo!FACT film that was screened in the Canadian Pavilion during the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Szporer is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, a lecturer in the Contemporary Dance department at Concordia University and is collaborating with Miller and Crystal Pite on a 3D dance film at the National Film Board of Canada. Valued at $6,000, the Jacqueline Lemieuz Prize has been awarded annually since 1980 to applicants of the Canada Council Grants to Dance Professionals program. Past recipients have included Robert Desrosiers (1980), Marie Chouinard (1986), David Earle (2001) and Judith Marcuse (2009).