• Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dance for PD program
  is one of five winners of Google’s Giving Through Glass Challenge, which invited nonprofits to propose how they’d use the Google Glass technology within their mission and programming. Dance for PD designed an app for those with Parkinson’s disease. It will include visual and musical cuing systems, which help users maintain a steady, rhythmic walking pace. Selected from a pool of more than 1,300 applicants, MMDG will receive a $25,000 grant, Google Glass, a trip to Google for training and access to Glass software developers.

  
  An Advancing the Avenue workshop

• Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland, has received a $210,000 grant from ArtPlace America to fund a multiyear project to create art hubs along New Hampshire Avenue. Advancing the Avenue will include historic walking tours that incorporate improvisation; community dance performances; and pop-up dance installations. Dance Exchange, under artistic director Cassie Meador, presented a performance of founder Liz Lerman’s work Still Crossing in September along the avenue.

• Bill T. Jones and the Brooklyn Academy of Music were honored by President Obama in July with National Medals of Arts. Jones is the artistic director of New York Live Arts and the director and co-founder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, where he often creates politically charged works. BAM, which opened in 1861, is the oldest continuously operating performing arts center in the U.S. The boundary-breaking venue has presented artists like Isadora Duncan and Rudolf Nureyev, and it sends dance companies all over the world for performances and cultural exchange in partnership with the U.S. Department of State. The National Medal of Arts is the highest award an artist or arts organization can receive.

  
  Bill T. Jones with President Obama

Photos from top: by John Borstel, courtesy of Dance Exchange; by Jocelyn Augustino, courtesy of National Endowment for the Arts