Honors and Awards

New Faculty Members Pearson and Widrig Awarded NEA Grant
Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig have just received a National Endowment for the Art's Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support a tour of Unmoored (Love Letters to New Orleans), their full-evening live documentary of dance, spoken word, video, and New Orleans music. Premiered at the Kennedy Center in May 2006, it has toured throughout the country since then. Unmoored was originally developed in multiple residencies throughout New Orleans during the months following Katrina. “Heart-wrenching and wryly humorous” (The Washington Post), the work inspires and challenges Americans to become actively engaged in the rebuilding and revitalizing of their country. Continually evolving as it tours from city to city, Unmoored offers an experience that is transformative in the deepest sense. In workshops and performances, students of all ages join displaced New Orleanians to creatively participate in a new kind of community rich in humor, honesty, and compassion that can touch the deepest places of grief and love.

The grant will help support the restaging of the project with members of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER and dance students at the University of Maryland at College Park , and will support four 3-day performance residencies of Unmoored on tour: Berkeley-Carroll School, Brooklyn, NY; Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY; School of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.