Awards & Honors
Mark DeGarmo continues to be recognized for his sustained outstanding contributions to the fields of dance and education.
Mark was featured on the cover and across 8 pages in the June issue of this magazine.
Download the PDF by clicking the following link: Dance Teacher Magazine June 2017.
The Martha Hill Dance Fund Mid-Career Award recognizes “continued outstanding achievement and significant contribution in the field of dance and dance education.” The award was presented at the Martha Hill Dance Fund’s 15th annual award ceremony by William Whitener, MDD Board Member, former dancer with The Joffrey Ballet, Twyla Tharp, and Bob Fosse, and former Artistic Director of the Kansas City Ballet.
Mark DeGarmo recalls:
“Martha Hill was a visionary educator and founder of the dance programs at Juilliard, NYU and Bennington. She was responsible for helping to develop the field of Modern Dance in the USA and internationally. I studied with Miss Hill at Juilliard. She encouraged my professional mentorships with Hanya Holm, a founder of American Modern Dance and an innovative Broadway choreographer, and Anna Sokolow, who invited me to join her Players Project ensemble and was a dance theater innovator with a keen sense of social justice and a mentor of Germany’s dance-theater pioneer Pina Bausch.”
Carl Wolz, another former student of Martha Hill and founder of the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts describes the Martha Hill Awards as:
“Our goal is to honor a professional in the dance field who exemplifies any or all of those qualities for which Martha Hill was most revered–whether an educator or a creative force who has made a significant contribution to the field of dance ‘behind the scenes’.”
Mark DeGarmo was honored with this award in recognition for creating sustained dance programs for PreK-5 kids and their teachers in Title 1 public schools in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and across New York City. The 2014 awardee was National Dance Institute’s founder Jacques d’Amboise.
In 2012, Mark DeGarmo was honored in Moscow at the opening and press conference of the “Enchanted Wanderers” exhibit at the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum of Russia. Photographs of DeGarmo’s work were featured alongside images of legendary Russian ballet dancers and artists who developed ballet in the West and made significant contributions to world cultures. These artists included Sergei Diaghilev, George Balanchine, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Oleg Briansky, Sonia Arova, HSH Princess Grace of Monaco and others. The exhibit toured internationally and entered the archives of the Museum.
In June 2015, Mark DeGarmo’s choreography and costumes were featured in Moscow at the most comprehensive international costume design exhibition ever curated. “Costume Design @ The Turn of the Century, 1990 – 2015,” was exhibited at the A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum. The exhibition curator and MDD’s costume designer, Igor Roussanoff, served on the original MDD Advisory Council. He is an internationally acclaimed costume and set designer, producer, and art director. The exhibition has since toured twice internationally.
The Millennium Artist Program National Finalist in Dance is an Official Project of the White House Millennium Council, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.