Bessies Vie With Boos at N.Y. Awards : Dance: Protesters call for Philip Morris, partial sponsor of the Dance and Performance Awards, to stop support of Sen. Jesse Helms.

The scene outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music suggested a political rally rather than an awards ceremony. Self-styled cigarette girls and Marlboro men handed out rolled-up “Helmsboros,” flyers calling on Philip Morris to cease supporting Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and urging a boycott of Philip Morris products.

Indeed, the name invoked most often Wednesday evening at the seventh annual New York Dance and Performance Awards (or Bessies as the awards are known) was not that of a performing artist but of Helms, whose efforts to impose restrictions on National Endowment for the Arts grants have inspired an activist response within New York’s performing arts community.

Both scheduled hosts for the event--performance artist Karen Finley (who won a Bessie) and actress Danitra Vance--withdrew to protest the partial sponsorship of the evening by Philip Morris Co. Inc. Philip Morris, which also supports the Next Wave Festival and a number of other arts events, is a major donor to Helms’ current re-election campaign and a planned center to store Helms’ papers.

On Thursday, Stephanie French, a Philip Morris vice president, confirmed the company’s continuing support for the Bessies as well as Helms. “Not all viewpoints were represented last night. We support Helms because of our tobacco interests. This does not mean we agree with him on other public-policy issues.”

Inside the BAM Opera House, the 3 1/2-hour ceremony was evenly divided between political pep talks (anti-Helms, outspokenly gay, and in support of an unrestricted NEA) and the awarding of the Bessies.

In the performer category, awards went to Arturo Armijo, a dancer with Susan Marshall and Dancers; Victoria Finlayson of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; Penny Hutchinson, long time dancer with Mark Morris; Jonathon Reisling (now with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) for his performances with the Jamison Project; Louise Smith, for her performance in Ping Chong’s “Brightness”; and Gail Turner, for her collective work with Meredith Monk. Recipients in this category receive a $500 cash award.

In the category of choreographer/creator, for which $1,500 is awarded, there were nine awardees: choreographer Margarita Guergue and musician Hahn Rowe for their collaboration “We Were Never There”; the collaborative duo Eiko and Koma, for their dance “Passage”; Ulysses Dove for “Episodes,” choreographed for the Ailey troupe; Karen Finley, for her controversial work “We Keep Our Victims Ready”; performance artist Robbie McCauley, for “Sally’s Rape”; and Belgium choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. Choreographer Garth Fagan and performance artist Pat Oleszko were given sustained achievement awards.

Special citations went to Annabelle Gamson, for her reconstructions of Isadora Duncan and Mary Wigman dances; Beate Gordon, for her presentations of Asian performing arts; and to Martha Wilson, founder and director of the performance space Franklin Furnace.