Meet Our Recipients
2022 Recipient
Shira Kagan-Shafman is a New York City based dancer and choreographer. She received her BA in Dance from the New School and spent a semester studying in Israel through DanceJerusalem. Kagan-Shafman has performed professionally in works by Peggy Florin, Dean Moss, Rebecca Stenn, jess pretty, Joanna Kotze and Mariana Valencia. Currently, she is working for Ephrat Asherie Dance.
2020 Recipient
Valentina Bache Rodriguez was born and raised in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. She began her dancing career immediately after taking her first steps and has been unable to stop ever since. At 15 years old, she skipped high school and moved to Massachusetts to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, where she obtained her Associates Degree in Biology and Dance at the age of 17. After three years of hard work trying to develop her artistic impulses alongside a career with alleged financial stability, she decided to fully turn her attention to dance. Thus, she moved to NYC to attend Hunter College for a BA in Dance graduating spring 2020. Her current works operate as introspective movement diaries in which personal and societal absurdities are explored unapologetically. Through the spatio-emotional investigation of the unmapped qualities and textures of human experience, Valentina hopes to enrich and innovate motion as an endless expressive realm of possibilities for herself and those involved in the process.
2019 Recipient
Lian Kizner is a graduating senior at Lehman College pursuing a Dance BA and a Psychology BA. She began dancing and performing at age seven in Studio E. She has studied different styles of dance such as modern, jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, and structured improvisation. She choreographed her first performed piece, "Negiot," in 2018, which was selected to perform at the Lehman College's Accepted Students Day. She has performed in pieces by Michael Manswell, Amy Larimer, Nicholas Leichter, and Alexandra Beller. In 2018, she was a featured dancer in two pieces in the Lehman College Spring Dance concert and performed in Quiana Prince's evening-length show, "Project L.O.V.E: No Love Lost." In 2019, she choreographed "I Loved Her," and assisted Quiana Prince in "Project L.O.V.E: Where the Wild things are!" Lian was the first recipient to humbly receive the BWPS Grant to produce her own dance show for June 2019.