How do they pick the honorees?

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For our last post during this awards week, we thought we'd answer the question of how the Ivey and Sage awards choose their honorees: At the Iveys, anyone who wants to be an evaluator can be one as long as they attend a training session and see at least five shows a year. According to Scott Mayer, Ivey's founder and head honcho, the number of evaluators vary per year but usually hovers between 100 and 150 who complete an online form after every show they see. "Some are theater professionals, most are not." (Also from Scott: "Anyone who wishes to be an evaluator can submit their name and contact information to [email protected], and we'll let them know when the next training session is going to be held.") Prior to the awards each year, the evaluations are compiled; during this process, certain exemplary shows and people rise to the surface. These possible awardees are then reviewed and confirmed by the Advisory Committee. At the VIP Party, Mu Performing Arts Artistic Director Rick Shiomi told me that the Advisory Committee has never vetoed any possible honorees. (The Advisory Committee is not responsible for seeing or evaluating shows and choosing honorees themselves.) The Sage Awards process is remarkably different. You can read about it in detail on their website, but in brief: First, unlike the Iveys, the Sage awards actually have set categories that they look to fill each year. Second, the evaluators are actually a smaller, panel of dance community members ("performers, dance makers, educators, writers, administrators, and avid audience members") whose identities remain secret until after the awards and who meet six times over the course of a year, sending at least two panel members to every performance. In other words, at the Sage Awards, a smaller group of people, who are immersed inside the field, see more shows than the larger number of evaluators at the Iveys. Either process has its advantages and flaws. I doubt that a perfect system of judgement can be created in such subjective fields, but I do think that the different processes help define, in part, why the ceremonies themselves have such different tones. During the Sage awards ceremony, the comments from the panelists were much more inwardly focused - with detailed explanations of how what the honoree did reflects, refracts, pushes, or exemplifies the field in general. During the Ivey awards, the comments from the evaluators are much more focused on the positive experience of the audience. In a sense, the Sage Awards are given from the field to the field; the Iveys are given from the audience to the performers. Make of that what you will.
Alan M. Berks

Alan M. Berks is a Minneapolis-based writer whose plays have been seen in New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and around the Twin Cities. He helped create Thirst Theater a while back. Now, he’s the co-founder of this here magazine. He’s also written Almost Exactly Like Us, How to Cheat, 3 Parts Dead, Goats, and more.