The Place Prize is a prestigious contemporary dance award, given to the winner of a biennial choreography competition organised by The Place in London.
The Place Prize was created in 2004 and has been sponsored by Bloomberg since its inception. With the stated aim of creating an award for choreographers comparable to the Turner Prize for visual artists and the Man Booker Prize for novelists, The Place Prize 2004 commissioned 20 UK-based artists to create new 15 minute works following an open application process; performances of these works were staged at The Place in September 2004 with Rafael Bonachela, Rosemary Butcher, Hofesh Shechter, Tom Roden & Pete Shenton and Bawren Tavaziva chosen as the five finalists. These finalists staged ten further performances, before a panel of judges named Rafael Bonachela as the inaugural Place Prize winner.
The Place Prize awarded over £120,000 to dance artists in 2004, with £40,000 distributed between the five finalists and £25,000 going to the overall winner.
The second Place Prize was held in 2006, with Nina Rajarani announced as the winner on Saturday 30 September.
The third Place Prize in 2008 named former Royal Ballet dancer Adam Linder as the overall winner.
The Place Prize 2010 is the current and fourth edition, and will be the biggest single source of commissions for Britain’s independent choreographers this year. The works created often remain in artists’ repertoire for years after the competition and are seen around the world. By the conclusion of this latest edition, The Place Prize will have enabled the creation of 76 works and invested over £1million in new dance.