Department of Performing Arts faculty members selected as Artist Fellows by DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities

Congratulations to Georgetown University Department of Performing Arts faculty members Profs. Debra Kim Sivigny and Miya Hisaka Silva, who were both recently selected as Artist Fellows by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Sivigny, an artist-in-residence in the Theater and Performance Studies Program, intends to use her award towards developing a design dramaturgy program, working with playwrights in the early stages of their play development. Silva, who is a Dance Program faculty member and Artistic Director of the GU Dance Company, plans to use her award for her professional dance company El Teatro de Danza Contemporanea de El Salvador’s upcoming 2012-2013 Season.

The Artist Fellowship Program (AFP) offers a monetary award to individual artists who make a significant contribution to the arts and substantively impact the lives of District of Columbia residents through their artistic excellence. The AFP recognizes the impact of individual artists throughout the District of Columbia and supports the vitality that those artists bring to the community.

The award is to be used towards at least one art-focused community engagement activity during the fiscal year that demonstrates that applicant’s connection and commitment to the residents of the District of Columbia. Artistic disciplines may include, but are not limited to, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, media arts, music, theater, and visual arts, as well as other emerging and experimental fields and multi-disciplinary media.

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities provides grants, professional opportunities, education enrichment, and other programs and services to individuals and nonprofit organizations in all communities within the District of Columbia. The Arts Commission is supported primarily by District government funds and in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Prof. Miya Hisaka Silva is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and international producer/presenter who has worked in El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, France, Italy, England, Jordan, Thailand, China, Canada and throughout the USA. She is former Founder/Director of the DC Contemporary Dance Theatre, Washington, DC’s first multi-cultural dance company selected as cultural ambassadors by USIS to represent the USA for a world tour for over a decade. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institution, Dance Place, The Central American Olympics, The Washington School of Ballet, The Loudoun Ballet, The Ministry of Education of El Salvador and Santa Clara University, among others, Hisaka Silva was trained by Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Eric Hawkins, Gloria Contreras, Gene Hill Sagan, Rod Rodgers and Kevin Iega Jeff, and later worked with her Associates, Lloyd Whitmore, Adrain Bolton, Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Juan Carlos Rincones, Francisco Castillo, among others. She holds a BA in Urban Studies from Columbia Univ., and an MPA from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs/Syracuse Univ., and has served on WDC’s Mayor’s Task Force for Arts/Economic Development; as a Public Service Fellow to the Maxwell School; an Arts Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts; and was recipient of WDC’s Mayor’s Arts Award of Excellence in l986. She is a former faculty member at the Washington School of Ballet, George Washington University, and in El Salvador at the National School of Dance. She is also former director of dance at the Central American University “Jose Simeon Canas” and creator of El Centro para Liderazgo en las Artes. A recent recipient of the University of San Francisco’s Jesuit Fellowship, she has served on faculty at the Marin Dance Theatre, Alonzo King LINES Ballet/SF Dance Center. Hisaka Silva is currently the director of the GU Dance Company, is Founder/Artistic Director of El Teatro de Danza Contemporanea de El Salvador, and is on faculty at Joy of Motion Dance Center.

Prof. Debra Kim Sivigny has been designing in the Washington DC area for more than a decade and is the resident faculty artist in the Theater and Performance Studies Program at Georgetown University. She teaches courses in design and costume history and has been a TLISI Summer fellow for two years introducing technology in the classroom. Recent professional credits include costume design for Theater J, Imagination Stage, Forum Theatre, and Rorschach Theatre where she is a company member. She has also designed for Kennedy Center TYA, Woolly Mammoth, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Everyman Theatre, and The Hub among others. She is a member of USA 829. She has a BA from Middlebury College and an MFA from the University of Maryland.

Read more about the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities grants.