Nominees announced for TAF Awards

Nominees announced for TAF Awards. Willowdale's Menaka Thakkar, a classical Indian dancer, is among the shortlisted nominees for the 2010 Toronto Arts Foundation (TAF) Awards. (Courtesy/TAF)

The TAF Awards, the winners of whom will be announced Oct. 8 at the Mayor's Arts Awards Lunch, recognize artists, cultural professionals and arts supporters who have made outstanding contributions to the city's artistic and cultural life.

Winners of four of the five awards will receive small cash prizes and all winners will also receive an original work of art by Jon Sasaki, a Toronto-based artist who held exhibitions earlier this year at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in Parkdale and Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

TAF, a separate but sister organization to the Toronto Arts Council, provides creative opportunities for donors to supports the arts.

Its 2010 list of awards and finalists include (information provided by TAF):

WILLIAM KILBOURN AWARD FOR THE CELEBRATION OF TORONTO'S CULTURAL LIFE

1) Mallory Gilbert joined the Annex's Tarragon Theatre in 1972, serving as general manager from 1978 to 2006, and is currently an arts consultant for small to midsize theatre companies. She served on the board of PACT for more than 20 years and was its president from 1989 to 1993. One of the founders of Creative Trust in 1998, she is currently the president. She has received many awards in recognition of her achievements and contributions to Canadian theatre and in 2006, Tarragon Theatre and PACT jointly created an annual award in her honour - The Mallory Gilbert Leadership Award. She was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2007.

2) Willowdale's Menaka Thakkar is a master dance artist of three classical Indian styles - Bharatanatyam, Odissi, and Kuchipudi. Menaka settled in Canada more than 38 years ago at the peak of her career and is credited with being the first artist to introduce Indian dance to Canadian audiences. She is the founder of the first school of Indian dance and the Menaka Thakkar Dance Company, Canada's premier Indian dance company. Thakkar continues to nurture the next generation of Indian dancers and develops uncompromising choreographies which consistently chance the face of dance in Canada.

3) R.M. Vaughan is a Toronto-based writer and video artist originally from New Brunswick. Since moving to Toronto in the early 1990s, Vaughan has published eight books (four poetry collections and two plays) and contributed poems, essays, stories and plays to more than 50 anthologies. Vaughan's plays have been performed across Canada and in the U.S. and his short video works have played in galleries and festivals around the world. Vaughan writes about art and culture for numerous publications and is a four-time National Magazine Award winner. Vaughan has participated in hundreds of community-based initiatives from performance events to prize juries to film screenings to charity fundraisers, as a performer, a lecturer, and a curator, and is currently curating a major exhibition of early Canadian video art for V-Tape.

ARTS FOR YOUTH AWARD

1) Art Starts, based out of Yorkdale, but which runs programs in Dufferin/Eglinton and Oakwood/Vaughan, Glendower in Scarborough, and Villawayz in North York, builds healthier communities using the arts, offering responsive and relevant creative opportunities to those living in underserved and stressed neighbourhoods. Art Starts brings together professional artists from all artistic disciplines to work with Toronto residents on projects that reflect the culture of the neighbourhood and involve participants from various ethnic backgrounds.

2) Manifesto Community Projects, which operates in Dufferin and Queen area, showcases diverse local artists and uses art to inspire social change - to transform conflict into creativity, adversity into opportunity, and oppression into expression. In addition to producing an annual festival, which showcases more than 300 artists, Manifesto organizes public town hall meetings, arts education and professional development workshops, arts exhibitions and fundraising events typically centred around the youth arts sector. Manifesto's origin lies in hip hop culture - in its spirit of ingenuity, raw creativity, self-starting and people power.

3) Supporting Our Youth (SOY), a program of the Sherbourne Health Centre, was established to increase support and services to LGBT youth. It works within an anti-oppression framework to create opportunities for queer and trans youth and adults to build an inclusive, welcoming community together. SOY currently provides arts, cultural and recreational spaces for young people, supportive housing and employment opportunities, as well as access to adult mentoring and support.

RBC EMERGING ARTIST AWARD

1) Toronto-born and Greece-raised Constantine Caravassilis, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, is regarded as one of the most prolific and highly gifted emerging composers in Canada. He has been hailed as "the most important Hellenic-descent composer of his generation", as well as commanding a "beyond the ordinary sense of musicality."

2) Jamie Travis is a Toronto-based filmmaker who has written and directed two trilogies of award-winning short films. His six shorts - Why the Anderson Children Didn't Come to Dinner, The Saddest Boy in the World, The Armoire and the Patterns Trilogy - all premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to international acclaim. Critics have drawn comparisons to Travis' work with filmmakers as disparate as David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock and Todd Solondz. Travis' growing body of work was played extensively in film festivals and at art galleries, from Toronto to Sundance to the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

3) Michael Wheeler is a director, performer, writer, online collaborator and co-artistic director of Praxis Theatre. He is director in training at the Tarragon Theatre for 2010, was artistic producer trainee with Volcano Theatre in 2009, and was recently named a member of The Wrecking Ball. He is currently creating the Canadian civil rights-themed work, Section 98, which was work-shopped this spring through the HATCH program at Harbourfront Centre. Michael is also the editor of praxistheatre.com rated no. 1 cultural blog in Canada in 2009. He holds a MFA from the Moscow Art Theatre.

ROY THOMSON HALL AWARD OF RECOGNITION

(for contributions to Toronto's musical life)

1) Lydia Adams is a conductor, pianist, composer, producer and arranger who demonstrates true dedication to Canadian choral music. Lydia is the artistic director of Scarborough's Amadeus Choir and Lawrence Park's Elmer Iseler Singers, both national leaders in commissioning, premiering, performing and recording Canadian choral works. Lydia has also conducted on numerous stellar compact discs dedicated to the choral works of Canadian composers.

2) Art of Time Ensemble, created by renowned classical pianist and artistic director Andrew Burashko, is one of Canada's most innovative and artistically accomplished music ensembles. Its mandate is to give classical music the contemporary relevance and context it needs to maintain a broader audience to survive. Since its inception, Art of Time has steadily grown in reputation as an ensemble that undertakes and delivers programs that are at once thought provoking and compelling. Burashko, though born in Moscow, moved to Willowdale when he was eight.

3) Jose Ortega has served as the Artistic Director of Lula Music and Arts Centre and the live music Lula Lounge in Little Portugal for almost a decade. As the artistic director of LMAC, Jose also oversees the organization's outreach and educational programs - including the family dance series, high school programs and musicians' workshops. As a volunteer, Ortega has contributed his expertise in World and Latin music to programming committees for Harbourfront's Ritmo y Colour festival, Salsa on St. Clair, Samba on Dundas, and Luminato. An internationally-recognized, commercial illustrator and public artist, Jose has generously donated his artwork to countless projects, including CD covers, postcards and posters for concerts at Lula, and for Samba on Dundas and Salsa on St. Clair.

TORONTO ARTS AND BUSINESS AWARD

1) BMO Financial Group, since 1817, has believed in community reinvestment and corporate and social responsibility to the communities it serves. BMO Financial Group is one of Canada's top corporate donors and remains steadfast in the belief that arts and culture enrich all our lives. BMO is being recognized for its long-standing commitment to mid-sized Toronto theatre organizations, as it continues to support companies who take profound artistic risks, forge new producing and presenting models and push ideas of what theatre might be.

2) George Brown College has established a reputation for equipping students with the skills, industry experience and credentials to pursue the careers of their choice. From its two main campuses located across the downtown core, George Brown offers nearly 160 programs across a wide variety of professions to a student body of 60,000 (including those enrolled in full-time, part-time and continuing education programs). George Brown College has helped transform the arts community in Toronto through a series of innovative and entrepreneurial partnerships including a full scale collaborative partnership with Ballet Jörgen Canada and the development of the Young Centre for the Performing Arts with Soulpepper Theatre Company.

3) St. Joseph Communications demonstrates a deeply rooted sense of social responsibility, instilled by company founder Gaetano Gagliano, who believed his life and business could only be successful if the community in which he lived and worked was thriving. To help commemorate its 50th anniversary in 2006, St. Joseph Communications announced a multi-million, multi-year donation to Canadian arts and cultural organizations. This support is intended to increase public awareness of the arts, help develop cultural facilities and artist's spaces, and encourage new talent and artistic excellence. With co-founder, the late David Pecaut, CEO Tony Gagliano became the creative and organizing force behind Luminato. After successfully convincing the federal government to include arts funding as part of the 2009 stimulus package, Tony and David were hailed as "Canada's all-time most successful lobbyists for public arts funding." After only four years, Luminato is one of the world's most important multi-national arts festivals.