Meet the 2026 winners of Eugene’s BRAVA arts awards

At one point, Suzanne Haag thought her dance career was over. Years back, Wynter Eddins worried she wasn’t having the impact in the classroom that she wanted to. As a child, Hannah Bontrager watched ballet performances in the Hult Center, hoping she could one day be a part of that world.

Now, all three are being honored as part of this year’s BRAVA awards, a suite of five recognitions given out by the Arts and Business Alliance of Eugene to honor notable contributions to the arts and culture scene of Eugene. 

“I feel really lucky that I’m in a community that supports that celebration of individual artists,” Haag said. 

Meet this year’s winners

Arts and Letters Award

The Arts and Letters Award — which predates the Arts and Business Alliance’s existence and has been honoring an individual who has made a particular contribution to Eugene’s arts since the 1980s — goes to Haag, Eugene Ballet’s associate artistic director and resident choreographer.

She took over the ballet’s creative direction last year, along with Jennifer Martin, from retiring longtime artistic director Toni Pimble.

Since then, the 46-year-old ballet luminary has premiered her first full-length ballet as choreographer, a new take on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”

Haag, originally from Connecticut, first saw “The Nutcracker” when she was 2 years old and wouldn’t talk about anything other than ballet.

But an injury when she was 14 years old — when repetitive strains of dance caused a stress fracture in her lower back — left her wearing a brace for nine months and thinking her career as a dancer was done. That left her one class in her dance school that she could participate in: choreography. “I couldn’t dance, but I could tell other people what to do,” she said.

She majored in arts administration at Butler University in Indianapolis, continuing to dance ballet while building a practical backup plan: join a dance company, or work behind the scenes somehow. 

After mailing out VHS tapes, she landed at a small dance company in Lexington, Kentucky, which folded shortly after the season started. When she went on the audition circuit again, trying out for the Eugene Ballet but landing in a traineeship in Las Vegas. Then, Pimble called her, saying there was a position in Eugene for her, if she would like to move. 

Haag did, joining the ballet and eventually expanding into another organization: #instaballet, which she co-founded with Antonio Anacan in 2013, choreographing more works under Pimble and, finally last fall, stepping into leadership.

She was particularly struck by the reception of “Dracula,” and the recognition of her AI-inspired reimagining of “Petrushka” in the national publication Dance Magazine.

“Every ballet I put on, I wonder, ‘Will people like it? I do want them to like it,’” she said. “I’m sure all artists have the feeling people are gonna throw tomatoes, but it was the opposite of that.”

Fentress Award

The Fentress Award, for an organization that has also made a notable impact, goes to Ballet Fantastique.

The family ballet company, started in 2000 by Eugene’s Bontrager family, is now a resident company at the Hult Center, where it recently had its first-ever world premiere in the Silva Concert hall with “Little Mermaid: The 80s Pop Ballet.” 

Ballet Fantastique prides itself on its approachability for new audiences to dance: their overlap with the Eugene Ballet audience, according to box office data, is less than 6%.

There is spoken-word narration, breaking a cardinal rule of ballet to help children and first-time attendees better understand the story and themes of a show. 

“They’re newer, younger and more nontraditional. Many of them call intermission ‘halftime,’” said Hannah Bontrager, who along with her mother and brother-in-law are the main three choreographer-producers for the company. “They don’t know when to clap, and I like it that way. They might interrupt a show by clapping in the middle of a piece because they think a lift is amazing, or laughing out loud or cheering for their favorite character.” 

Dave Hauser Award

While the majority of the awards are for particular creatives or groups working in the arts and culture space, two recognize savvy collaborators in the arts in Eugene. 

The Dave Hauser Award, for a business that has been a particular supporter of arts in Eugene, went to Summit Bank. Summit should be familiar to Eugene residents, both from its prominent downtown building and — for people who make a habit out of attending arts and culture events — the frequent appearance of its  logo in different pamphlets and programs for organizations it sponsors.

Arts and Business Partnership Award

The Arts and Business Partnership Award went to Art House and the band Minor Mirage, who collaborated on well-attended live scored screenings of the 1928 silent Western classic, “The Wind.”

The live-scored screening, which started last November, was supposed to be a one-off event. It was repeated this February due to popular demand, the Eugene Weekly wrote in an event preview.   

The awards ceremony itself next week at the Hult Center will include part of the collaboration live, with Minor Mirage playing part of their original score to “The Wind” live. 

Visionary Award 

The final award, given out for the second time, is to recognize a person or organization bringing innovative energy into the arts ecosystem. This year’s Visionary Award was for the Simply Youth Institute, a youth program blending creative expression, workforce development mentorship and more in Los Angeles and Lane County. 

It was founded by educator, poet and performer Wynter Eddins in Los Angeles in 2019, before a 2024 expansion to Eugene and Springfield. She visited Eugene three years ago, visiting in her role as a consultant and trainer supporting multilingual educators, like she had done in a low-income school in Los Angeles. 

In Eugene and Springfield, she said, she was particularly struck by the isolation and mental health issues facing young women who were Black, had experienced homelessness and, though interacting with many service providers, still left lacking.

Eddins, also an artist, performer and survivor of domestic violence, said she knew firsthand how healing art can be; students who participate in Simply Youth Institute have an opportunity to publish books of their art and writing, like Amiya Varble did. 

Varble, 19, published a book of poetry and memoir called “Her Voice Discovered,” reflecting on her life as a youth experiencing homelessness in Eugene. Varble died by suicide last November, and Eddins recently performed her poetry at the WOW Hall in honor of her memory.

Eddins reflected on the last two years of Simply Youth Institute in Lane County, either working with young women like Varble, or the 11 young women who published books last month, who shared writing about vulnerable times in their lives while taking center stage at the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center on the University of Oregon campus.

“This is my dream work,” she said. 

If you go

The BRAVAs are next Tuesday, May 12, at 5:30 p.m. at the Soreng Theater in the Hult Center in downtown Eugene. Tickets are $35.