Choreographer and performer Zab Maboungou has received the Charles Biddle Award 2013. The award highlights the contribution of immigrants to the artistic and cultural development of Québec. Maboungou founded Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata in 1986, with the aim of promoting African dance in Canada. Maboungou took the title along with host and humorist Boucar Diouf.
Stage One (directors pictured) has been awarded the prestigious 2013 Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the category of Continuous Innovation. The Yorkshire company created the Olympic cauldron for the London 2012 Games, and designed technology for the opening and closing ceremonies. CEO Mark Johnson said: ‘We’re delighted to win Britain’s most prestigious business award – it’s a testament to the creative talent, energy and hard work of our highly skilled team of craftsmen, designers, engineers, technologists and artists.’
Stage designer Sophie Jump took the top title at this year’s World Stage Design Awards, winning the Gold Award for Exceptional Achievement Across All Categories for her work Like a Fish Out of Water, a production which saw the English National Ballet perform at London lidos. Held in Cardiff, the ceremony also saw Tung-Yen Chow take the award for Interactive and New Media, and Jamie Vartan for Set Design.
In its centenary year, the Critics’ Circle has honoured John Eliot Gardiner with its 2013 Award for Outstanding Musician. The award will be presented later this month at a ceremony at the Royal Opera House, where Gardiner is currently conducting Le Nozze di Figaro. Guy Dammann, chair of the Critics’ Circle Music Section, said: ‘John Eliot Gardiner is that rare figure among musicians in being both a household name and an artist of uncompromising vision. His exceptional creative energy and drive is as immediately palpable today as it was when he founded the Monteverdi Choir almost 50 years ago, and is equally evident in his live music making as it is in the stream of new projects on which he embarks every year. In this, the year of his 70th birthday, also the year which marks the fruition of his visionary and vast Bach Cantatas series, it is hard to think of a musician in our lifetime who has done more to shape and change the way we listen to music, both directly through his own creative work and also indirectly, through the generations of musicians he has guided and inspired.’