Good things have been happening to Whim W’Him in recent weeks.

Olivier Wevers, Whim W’Him’s founder and resident choreographer, is talking and working with potential presenters, collaborators and sponsors—local, national, and international.

The company was also voted Seattle Weekly’s Readers’ Choice for 2011 Best Arts Organization; and Olivier has received a prestigious Princess Grace Award for Choreography:  fellowship for a collaboration with a non-profit dance company, in this case Spectrum Dance Theater, whose Director Donald Byrd nominated him.

Meanwhile, Whim W’Him was selected to perform at Bumbershoot this Monday, Sept 5. In FRAGMENTS, Chalnessa Eames danced a new role for her with Vincent Michael Lopez in the role he danced in the most recent version of FRAGMENTS.

This Is Not a Raincoat got something of a new look…

…while Monster received its usual acclamation.

In a recent three-day residency at Tieton, near Yakima, the participants lived together communally and frugally, devoting all their energies to developing movement, “working on something different than we ever would otherwise,” as Olivier put it.

But his biggest current project, still in its conceptual and first-actual-steps stage, delves into a somber and complex topic, the subject of the next post on this blog.