Congratulations, 2024 WAA Award Recipients!
Celebrating Leadership, Creativity, Service, and Mentorship
Congratulations to our 2024 WAA Awardees whose leadership, creativity, service, mentorship and dedication have advanced our field and association.
We will be celebrating these incredible colleagues at the 2024 Annual Luncheon & WAA Awards Ceremony on August 28 in San Diego as part of WAA 2024. Join the celebration — add the luncheon when you register, or reach out to add luncheon tickets to your existing conference registration through August 18.
2024 Emeritus Award
Cathy Weiss | Del E. Webb Center for the Performing Arts
Awarded at retirement or upon leaving the field, the Emeritus Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the field, to the candidate’s organization, and/or to WAA.
In 1997, Cathy Weiss became a founding Board Member of the Del E. Webb Center for the Performing Arts and in 2003 was named Executive Director. The Webb Center is a 600-seat state of the art venue located in Wickenburg Arizona. The Center is a non-profit organization that raises or earns almost $2 million dollars annually to operate. In a community with a population of 10,000, the Webb Center occupies 92% of its seats for performances annually.
With a staff of 7 employees and 150 volunteers, The Webb Center’s body of work includes; presenting a series of 30 professional touring national and international performances between November and April, managing an artist-live work space designed to permit artistic companies to create new work, The Made in Wickenburg Residency Program.
Education components include life-long learning, arts-in-education programs to 2,900 children in rural Arizona through free classroom workshops, school performances and producing a two incredible summer arts camps in the month of June, Camp Imagination.
Ms. Weiss is fiscally responsible for the organization while overseeing facility management, audience development, publicity/marketing, membership/volunteer services, fund and board development. Ms. Weiss was raised in Arizona and prior to entering the non-profit world enjoyed a 27-year career in the luxury hotel business in locations all across the world.
Lindsay Kratz, agent with Opus 3 Artists, shared her experience working with Cathy in her nomination. “I've worked with Cathy my entire career as a west coast agent. I have always loved working with her, and know that she has impacted her community and those who participate in Camp Imagination and the Made in Wickeburg residency, in ways that are life changing.”
2024 Mentoring Award
Michael Sakamoto | University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center
Recognizing excellence in mentoring and a commitment to the professional advancement of the Western performing arts community.
Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, educator, and curator active in dance, theatre, performance, media, photography, installation, and social practice. His works have been presented in 15 countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Recent performance tours include: Flash, a butoh/hip-hop duet with Rennie Harris; Soil (National Dance Project grantee), a dance theater trio with performers from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam/USA; and blind spot, an intermedia performance around personal identity and corporate militarism. Michael’s research and performance interests include contemporary imaginings of the butoh-based “body in crisis,” corporeal and mediated embodiments of self-reflection and social resistance, and performing the cultural commons and cultural sustainability.
Current projects include Garden of the Wilis, a collaboration with former film, Broadway, and American Ballet Theatre star, George de la Peña, and classical new music composer-musician, Hyeyung Yoon, unpacking racial and gender privilege in the ballet and butoh bodies, and Our Utopia, a social practice collaboration with dance, gender, engineering, and education researchers and students at University of Massachusetts Amherst around race, gender, and social justice challenges in photography and cycling.
Michael has also produced, exhibited, and published numerous visual and media projects, including the photo essays MuNK, Nu Tong Gin Khao (with Waewdao Sirisook), and El Espiritu del Barrio Chino (with Paul Outlaw), the dancefilm, Abbey, featuring dancer Angela Betina Carlos, and the multimedia installation, Doctor Chi: An Architecture of Love and Paranoia.
“Michael has been attending WAA for years, served on the Hyphen+Asian committee and was a key contributor in making the pre-con symposium happen. His mentoring and professional development support of AAPI artists has been significant to me and to many folks I know.” -Nadhi Thekkek, Nava Dance Theatre
Michael regularly publishes and presents his research in a wide range of anthologies and journals in dance and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, media studies, and other fields. His book, An Empty Room: Imagining Butoh and the Social Body in Crisis, narrating a journey through butoh history and practice into contemporary social theory, was released in 2022 from Wesleyan University Press. (Order here!)
Michael holds an MFA in Dance and PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, is former Co-Director of Goddard College’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program and former tenure-track Assistant Professor in Dance at the University of Iowa.
Michael currently serves as Performing Arts Curator and Asian and Asian American Arts and Cultures Program Director at the University of Massachusetts Fine Arts Center.
2024 Service Award
Joe McIalwain | JM Arts Consulting, LLC
The Service Award is given to recognize exceptional volunteer service to Western Arts Alliance, its members, and the field.
Joe McIalwain is a performing arts executive with experience in both the public and non-profit sectors. He recently relocated to Austin, TX with his wife, Jamie Herlich, who began her tenure as Managing Director of ZACH Theatre in September 2022.
Most recently, Joe was the Founding Executive Director of Edmonds Center for the Arts in Edmonds, WA, a position he held for 17 years. Prior to this role, Joe served as Managing Director of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Director of Development for Kirkland Performance Center (Kirkland, WA), and held Assistant Professor positions for the University of Alabama and the Seattle University Arts Administration programs.
As a consultant, Joe has engaged in organizational and facility development projects for Field Arts & Events Hall (Port Angeles, WA), Federal Way Arts & Events Center (Federal Way, WA), Broadway Center for the Performing Arts (Tacoma, WA), Texas Performing Arts (Bass Hall, Austin TX), Creative Action (Austin, TX), and Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra.
Joe received his Bachelor of Arts in Drama from the University of Washington, and his Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Management from the University of Alabama. His volunteer board service has included Edmonds Chamber of Commerce, Theatre Puget Sound (Past President), Inspire Washington – Washington State’s Arts Advocacy Association, Leadership Snohomish County (Past President), and Western Arts Alliance (Immediate Past President).
“Joe has served WAA in a number of capacities, through his nearly 9 years on the Board and through his term as Board President, leading WAA through some difficult times -- the years of the pandemic and the search process for a new Executive Director, culminating in the successful hiring of Josh Heim to succeed Tim Wilson’s long and impactful tenure. Joe’s leadership helped steer WAA through some unprecedented times. WAA now has the opportunity to express its gratitude by honoring him with a Service Award.” -Karen A Fischer, Pasifika Artists Network
2024 Leadership Award
Margo Kane | Full Circle: First Nations Performance
The Leadership Award honors extraordinary vision, distinguished leadership, and artistic achievement.
Cree-Saulteaux performing artist, Margo Kane is the Founder and Artistic Managing Director of Full Circle: First Nations Performance. For over 45 years she has been active as an actor, performing artist and community cultural worker. Her desire to share artistic performance that has meaning for her people is the catalyst for her extensive work, travels and consultation within Indigenous communities across Canada and abroad. Moonlodge, her acclaimed one-woman show, an Indigenous Canadian classic, toured for over 10 years nationally and internationally. The Sydney Press (AU) during The Festival of the Dreaming praised it as being ‘in the top echelon of solo performance.’
She developed and runs the annual Talking Stick Festival celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year and numerous programs including Moccasin Trek: Arts on the Move!, Indian Acts and an Indigenous Ensemble Performing Arts Program in Vancouver.
“Not only was she an anchor for indigenous work and visibility at that conference, but the issues it raised helped launch WAA’s acclaimed AIP program, to support U.S. based indigenous artists seeking to build a career in performing and touring. Nearly 50 indigenous artists have been served by the AIP program, opening doors and changing the face of booking and touring across the country. While many hands contributed to AIPs success, Margo was both a model and a guide.” -Karen A Fischer, President of Pasifika Artists Network
She has received numerous awards and honors including an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, the Order of Canada from the Governor-General, an International Citation of Merit from ISPA – International Society for the Performing Arts and most recently, an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from SFU – Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
The WAA Awards
Since 1985, the annual WAA Awards have celebrated and recognized colleagues and organizations who have advanced the performing arts field and strengthened the WAA community — those who enrich, inspire, and energize our work and our industry. See past award recipients here.