The Martha Hill Dance Fund Unveils Honorees for 2026 Martha Hill Awards
This year, dance industry leaders Joan Finkelstein and Phyllis Lamhut will receive the Fund’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jan. 05, 2026
The Martha Hill Dance Fund has revealed the honorees of the 2026 Martha Hill Awards to be presented at 6:00 P.M. on Monday, February 2 at Manhattan Penthouse, 80 Fifth Avenue in New York City. This year, dance industry leaders Joan Finkelstein and Phyllis Lamhut will receive the Fund’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Dante Puleio and David Hamilton Thomson will receive the Mid-Career Award. In addition, The Martha Hill Dance Fund has announced The MESH Fellowship, a new initiative for mentoring emerging choreographers and professional dancers.
The Martha Hill Dance Fund perpetuates the legacy of Martha Hill whose influence in the world of dance and performance is immeasurable. The Martha Hill Dance Fund ensures access to Hill’s work through published materials, film, digital archives, and other projects established in her name.
The 2026 Martha Hill Awards Gala will be hosted by dance world legend Virgina Johnson.
“This year’s honorees represent continued excellence in artistic leadership and performance,” said Vernon Scott, Martha Hill Fund Board president. “For 2026, I’m also proud to announce the inaugural recipients of the Fund’s MESH Fellowship. This new annual initiative, to Mentor, Educate, Support and Hone, will grant cash awards and mentorship to two worthy individuals. The 2025-26 Emerging Choreographer Jade Manns and Emerging Dancer Babou Sanneh embody the talent and passion the initiative seeks to showcase.”
Joan Finkelstein
Joan Finkelstein (EdD, Dance Education Leadership & Policy: Teachers College, Columbia University; MFA, BFA: NYU Tisch Dance) has been executive director of the Harkness Foundation for Dance since 2014. She has performed in modern, contemporary ballet, and Afro-Haitian companies and on Broadway; choreographed for ballet and modern companies; and taught children, teens, and adults nationwide. As director of the 92Y Harkness Dance Center (1992-2004), she supervised classes, workshops, performance festivals, space grants, lectures, weekly social dances, and the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) which was founded during her tenure. While director of dance for the NYC Department of Education (2004-2014) she spearheaded the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance, PreK-12 dance standards; citywide student dance assessments; and 75 professional development workshops for DOE dance teachers. She supervised the dance portion of the USDOE-funded arts assessment research project ARTS ACHIEVE in 20 elementary, middle, and high schools. Joan served on the dance writing teams for the 2014 National Core Arts Standards and the 2017 New York State Learning Standards for the Arts. She was a BESSIES NY Dance & Performance Committee member for 16 years, and since 2025, serves on the Dance Magazine Awards Committee.
Ms. Finkelstein’s award will be presented by Jody Gottfried Arnhold.
PHYLLIS LAMHUT
Phylis Lamhut, choreographer of 100+ works and principal dancer for 20 years with Nikolais Dance Theater and Murray Louis Dance Company, has performed globally on stages, television, and with National Endowment for the Arts Dance Touring and Artists in Education programs. Phyllis Lamhut Dance Company was formed in 1970. She directed National Association of Regional Ballet Craft of Choreography Conference; National Canadian Composer/Choreographer Seminar; Dance and Music Workshop, Israel; Venice Biennale Move Man project; Carlisle Project New Impulses; and was Choreography Advisor/Editor for Joyce-Soho Residency. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from NYS Council on the Arts and NY Foundation for the Arts, Mary Flagler Charitable Trust, and Meet the Composer/Choreography Project. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded her 16 Choreography Fellowships. She was on the NYU Tisch School of the Arts faculty 1987-2022. In 2013, she was Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Bieneke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching from American Dance Festival. She has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from American Dance Guild (2022) and Mark DeGarmo Dance (2023).
Ms. Lamhut’s award will be presented by Robert Small.
DANTE PULEIO
Dante Puleio, a widely respected former member of the Limón Dance Company for more than a decade, is the sixth Artistic Director in the Company’s 75-year history, a position that originated with Doris Humphrey. After a diverse performing career with the Limón Dance Company, touring national and international musical theatre productions, television and film, he received his MFA from University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on contextualizing mid-20th century dance for the contemporary artist and audience. He is committed to implementing that research by celebrating José Limón's historical legacy and reimagining his intention and vision to reflect the rapidly shifting 21st century landscape.
Mr. Puleio’s Award will be presented by Kurt A. Douglas
David Hamilton THOMSON
David Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist who has worked extensively across the fields of dance, music, performance, and theater for over 40 years, working and collaborating with a wide range of artists including Bebe Miller, Trisha Brown (1987-1993), Ralph Lemon, Sekou Sundiata, Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer, Maria Hassabi, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born and Matthew Barney among many others. Thomson’s work has been recognized with awards and fellowships from United States Artists[Ford], New York Foundation for the Arts, Yaddo, MacDowell, Rauschenberg, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Alpert Award. He was honored with a Bessie for Sustained Achievement (2001) and for Outstanding Production for he his own mythical beast (2018). In 2017, Thomson initiated the Artist Sustainability Project with Kate Watson-Wallace as an ongoing platform that seeks to expand the discourse and ideas of financial, artistic, and personal empowerment in the arts community. In 2024, he and Emily Waters developed YoungArts’ Artist Resource Collective (ARC), a financial wellness and professional development program.
Mr. Thomson’s award will be presented by Judy Hussie-Taylor.
Virginia Johnson - Host
A founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Virginia Johnson was one of its principal ballerinas over a career that spanned nearly 30 years. After retiring in 1997, Ms. Johnson went on to found Pointe Magazine and was editor-in chief for 10 years. A native of Washington, D.C., Ms. Johnson began her training with Therrell Smith. She studied with Mary Day at the Washington School of Ballet and graduated from the Academy of the Washington School of Ballet. She went on to be a University Scholar in the School of the Arts at New York University before joining Dance Theatre of Harlem. Virginia Johnson is universally recognized as one of the great ballerinas of her generation and is perhaps best known for her performances in the ballets Giselle, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fall River Legend. She has received such honors as a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America Award, the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington Performing Arts Society’s 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award.
About Martha Hill
Martha Hill was the founding director of the dance programs/departments at New York University’s School of Education (teaching dance in the Physical Education department starting in 1930 and initiating the graduate program in dance education in 1938), Bennington College (1932), and the Juilliard School (1951), as well as the summer festivals: Bennington School of the Dance (1934) and Connecticut College School of the Dance (1948), precursors to the American Dance Festival, one of the most important dance festivals in the United States, now held at Duke University. With these programs and festivals, Hill established early and diverse models for dance in higher education: Dance in Physical Education, Dance as part of the Liberal Arts, Dance in a Conservatory, and the Summer Dance Festival. It should be noted that she held full-time appointments at Bennington College and New York University simultaneously, while also directing summer dance programs, which indicates her enormous drive and energy. Hill brought in renowned professional choreographers to teach her students at all the institutions where she directed dance. By bringing professionals into higher education, she exposed her students to the highest artistic standards. She also became a benefactor, through the institutions, to the dance artists by giving them teaching work and producing their choreography. In addition, she combined ballet and modern together as a training method at Juilliard, a revolutionary concept in the 1950s in the United States. This affected the blending and merging of the two forms as other training institutions followed her model, leading dancers to become highly skilled in both genres. When the Juilliard Dance Division was in danger of being closed at the time of the school’s move to Lincoln Center, Hill waged a fierce battle to keep the division intact, and she won. Hill was the moving force of 20th century American concert dance and dance education and tied the two together in a lasting relationship that continues today to the betterment of both.
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