Neil GreenbergMFA, Dance, Sarah Lawrence College
BA, Dance, Empire State College, State University of New York
Professor of Choreography, The Arts
Profile:I’ve been creating dances since 1979. I’m obsessed with the particular kinds of meaning that dance can provide (sensual, perceptual, ontological), and with how we construct “meanings” from the various data we receive, in dance and in life. The work for which I’m probably most known is Not-About-AIDS-Dance, which employs projected text as a layering strategy to complicate the performance moment, and to open doors for the viewer into the more abstract potencies in the dancing. Through this work, also, I became aware of how the intensely personal can contribute to the political.
My long career in dance includes working as a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; as a teacher on the dance faculties of Purchase College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California, Riverside; and as dance curator at The Kitchen, the interdisciplinary performance space in NYC. Together with my ongoing work as a choreographer these experiences all inform my teaching, though which I hope to help students find a broad understanding of what dance might be.
I undertook my own university studies relatively later in my career, at a time when I was questioning the validity of my life as a choreographer, open to the possibility of re-directing my energies. Instead, I found a reinvigorated commitment to the value of art, and to an education in the arts. I believe that an education in the arts—indeed, in dance in particular—is an especially fertile ground for the cultivation of critical thinking that is rooted in concrete practice.
Courses Taught:Office Location:Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts
65 W. 11th Street, room B67
New York, NY 10011
Phone Number/Extension:(212) 229-5100 x2297
Email:GreenbeN@newschool.eduPersonal Website:www.neilgreenberg.orgResearch Interests:Performances:Awards and Honors:Selected Awards and Honors:
American Music Center / Live Music for Dance Grants / 2010, 2008, 2004
- Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Award / 2009
Harkness Foundation for Dance Grants / 1992-2008
Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund Commissions / 2007, 2005
New York State Council on the Arts Grants / 1990-2008
Time Out/New York Dance Audience “Bessie” Award for Partial View / 2005
National College Choreography Initiative (NCCI) Commission / 2005
National Endowment for the Arts, Access to Artistic Excellence Grant / 2005
National Dance Project (NDP) Commission / 2004
BUILD Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts / 2003
Joyce SoHo Artist Residency Fellowship / 2002
White Oak Dance Project, Commissioned Works / 1998, 1999
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship / 1997
National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer’s Fellowships / 1995-1996, 1991-1992, 1990, 1988
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships / 1996, 1990
New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Choreographer’s Award for Not-About-AIDS-Dance / 1995
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship / 1992