Providence, RI - In Ceremonies Out of the Air, Ralph Lemon merges live performance, story telling, and film to invoke his long-standing exploration of the American South, uncovering the complexity of geography, history, and memory.
As artistic director of Cross Performance, Ralph Lemon is renowned for both his choreography and visual artistry. With Cross Performance, Lemon creates cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performances and presentations. He builds teams of collaborating artist—from diverse cultural backgrounds, countries and artistic disciplines—who bring their history and aesthetic to their work together.
Ceremonies Out of the Air is part of the Mellon Dance Studies Colloquium, sponsored at Brown by the Creative Arts Council, the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Mellon Dance Studies Colloquium at Brown University invites artists and scholars from a range of disciplines and contexts to discuss the ways in which dance practices matter in the contemporary field. Across a series of creative and critical events, the colloquium examines choreographic histories, methodologies, techniques, and languages as they intersect with and press upon a series of vital artistic, social, epistemological, and political issues.
The event is free and open to the public. For more information: www.brown.edu/theatre.
About Ralph Lemon:
Ralph Lemon was an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Artist Award (2012) and one of fifty artists to receive the inaugural United States Artists Fellowship in 2006. He was the 2013 Annenberg Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art, has received two “Bessie” (NY Dance and Performance) Awards, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2004 Fellowship with the Bellagio Study and Conference Center. In 1999, Lemon was honored with the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts.
Lemon has been artist-in-residence at Temple University in Philadelphia (2005-06); George A. Miller Endowment Visiting Artist at the Krannert Center (2004); and a Fellow of the Humanities Council and Program in Theater and Dance at Princeton University (2002). From 1996-2000, he was Associate Artist at Yale Repertory Theatre. In 2009, he was an IDA fellow at Stanford University and in 2011 he was a Visiting Critic with the Yale University.
Lemon’s most recent work, How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? (2008-2010) was a four-part project consisting of live performance, film, and visual art. The first three parts were presented on stage with a cast of seven and the fourth,Meditation (created with video designer Jim Findlay), was an immersive visual art installation.
The project also included a mixed-media exhibition of works created by Lemon and his long-time collaborator/muse, Walter Carter, a black man from Mississippi whose life spanned the 20th Century.
Other recent projects include Some Sweet Day, a performance series curated by Lemon in 2012 at the Museum of Modern Art, NY;Paradance, a series of performed lectures, which Lemon presented at universities and art centers throughout 2011; an online installation (www.ralphlemon.net); and Rescuing the Princess, a 2009 performance commission for the Lyon Opera Ballet. In 2010, Lemon curated I Get Lost, a performance and humanities series for Danspace Project, New York, NY. In 2005 Lemon concluded The Geography Trilogy – a ten-year project encompassing three full-evening dance/theater works – Geography (1997), Tree (2000), andCome home Charley Patton (2004).
Lemon has presented his visual art work at: Studio Museum in Harlem (2012); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2010); Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans (2008), The Kitchen, New York (2007) and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2006); Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT (2001); Margaret Bodell Gallery, New York (2000); Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2010-11), among others.
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If you have any questions or to schedule an interview, please contact:
Nancy Safian, Academic Events Coordinator
(401) 863-6951 / nancy_safian@brown.edu / brown.edu/theatre