ArtsWeek will offer a special new award during 2010: the Anya Peterson Royce ArtsWeek Showcase Award. This award was created to highlight an ArtsWeek event that reflects Royce's longtime scholarly interests in the performing arts.

The showcase award will be given to an ArtsWeek project in dance, music, or performance art that especially strives toward Royce's ideal of artistry. The award recipient(s) will be chosen from events submitted through the existing ArtsWeek grants process. ArtsWeek Coordinator Sherry Knighton-Schwandt and others will select a specific event from among the submitted projects.

Along with the prestige of the Anya Peterson Royce Showcase Award title, the recipient(s) will receive an additional $500 of ArtsWeek funding to help support further promotion, travel, supplies, or other project needs.

The award was introduced during the 25th anniversary of ArtsWeek to honor Anya Royce's ArtsWeek involvement and her overall contributions to the world of the arts in Bloomington and beyond. Royce initially sparked ArtsWeek in 1983, when she formed the IU Bloomington Arts Coordinating Council with the mission of fostering collaborative artistic activity in and around the Bloomington community.

Royce, who is now a Chancellors' Professor of anthropology and of comparative literature, remains an internationally regarded expert in the anthropology of dance and the performing arts, with a focus on the cultural meanings of identity, virtuosity, and artistry.