The Bessie Award

On September 21, 2001, the New York Dance and Theater community presented Dennis Diamond and Video D with The Bessie Award.

The award read:

A 2000-2001 Special Citation to Dennis Diamond & Video D

For Sustained Achievement of lens and tape and electronic reconstruction, as creator, documenter, improviser and ultimately digital dancer-correspondent of the history-in-progress of our community. For unblinking eyewitness accounts of the evanescent art and detail of dance as it happens, a quarter century as the man-with-a camera on the stage and at the monitor of recorded choreography as well as inseparable collaborator to numerous artists from Bruce Nauman, Bill Irwin, and Blue Man Group to Senta Driver, Elizabeth Streb and the Jose Limon Dance Company.

signed by David R. White and the Awards Committee

Here are some excerpts from Dennis remarks when he accepted the award:

When I was 3 years old I was watching Fred Astaire on TV and asked my mother if I could do that. My parents, Pearl and Irwin Diamond took me to tap dance class in Queens. They had always set the standard for my life, which is "encouragement for doing things I believe in."

At age 7 I got my first camera, which became glued to my eye. My dance training continued at the High School of Performing Arts and Harkness House.

In 1976 I walked into talk to the young David R. White. I said, I would document 14 concerts in the fall season for a hundred dollars. I documented them but their budget could not afford the hundred bucks. I figured I had to stay.

I LOVE THE DANCE.

Thank you Bessie Committee for recognizing my contribution. Thanks to the New York Public Library and the Performing Arts Division Madelyn Nichols, Jan Schmidt and the unseen heroes who help preserve the material that I produce.

I thank my staff and I thank every dancer, choreographer, stage crew genius, and those involved in the world of dance and theater for allowing me to enhance my craft.