Dance Guest Artists

Ralph Lemon

Ralph Lemon headshot

photo by Tara Fallaux

About

Ralph Lemon, whose career spans over 30 years, is a director, choreographer, writer, visual artist and curator, and the Artistic Director of Cross Performance, a company dedicated to the creation of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performance and presentation. In 2016 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. He is known for developing intellectually rigorous and experimental performances that are as socially and politically resonant as they are personal. This approach is evident in his multimedia collaboration How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? (2008-2010), a work with live performance, film and visual art. Other recent works include the innovative dance/film project Four Walls (2012); a commission for the Lyon Opera Ballet, Rescuing the Princess (2009); and the epic cycle, The Geography Trilogy (1997-2004). His honors include three “Bessie” Awards), an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Creative Capital Award, a U.S.A. Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Choreographers Award, and one of the first Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Awards. Lemon has been an IDA Fellow at Stanford University; artist-in-residence at Temple University; Miller Endowment Visiting Artist at the Krannert Center; Fellow of the Humanities Council and Program in Theater and Dance at Princeton University; Associate Artist at Yale Repertory Theatre; a Visiting Critic at the Yale School of Art’s Sculpture Department; and the 2013-14 Annenberg Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art, where he curated a series of “performance essays,” titled Value Talks.