Faculty

Profile

I’ve been creating dances since 1979. I’m obsessed with the particular kinds of meaning that dance can provide (sensual, perceptual, phenomenological), 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 some of 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.

Degrees Held

MFA, Dance, Sarah Lawrence College

BA, Dance, Empire State College, State University of New York

Professor of Choreography, The Arts

Performances and Appearances

Selected Choreographic Works: 

• Betsy / La MaMa / 2022
• To the things themselves! / The Chocolate Factory / 2018
• This / New York Live Arts / 2014
• (like a vase) / Dance Theater Workshop / 2010
• Really Queer Dance With Harps / Dance Theater Workshop / 2008
• Quartet With Three Gay Men / Dance Theater Workshop / 2006
• Partial View / Dance Theater Workshop / 2005
• Two / Dance Theater Workshop / 2003
• Construction with Varied Materials / The Kitchen / 2001
• Sequel / The Joyce Theater / 2000
• This is What Happened / P.S. 122 / 1999
• Tchaikovsky Dance / White Oak Dance Project / 1998
• Part Three (My Fair Lady) / The Joyce Theater / 1997
• The Disco Project / P.S. 122 / 1995
• Not-About-AIDS-Dance / The Kitchen / 1994
• I Am A Miserable And Selfish Person (Kick Me Dance) / La Mama / 1992
• MacGuffin or How Meanings Get Lost / La Mama / 1987

Performance as a Dancer:

• Dance By Neil Greenberg / 1986-present
• Maria Hassabi / Plastic / MoMA / 2016
• Susan Rethorst / Beau Regard / Danspace Project / 2011
• Vicky Shick / Not Entirely Herself / The Kitchen / 2011
• Deborah Hay/ O, O / Danspace Project / 2005
• Merce Cunningham Dance Company / 1979-1986 

Research Interests

•Choreographic Research & Experimentation
•Art-Marking & Creative Process
•Somatic Techniques & Experiential Anatomy

Awards And Honors

Selected Awards and Honors:

• New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships / 2022, 1996, 1990
• New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie)" Award Nomination for Outstanding Production for This / 2015
• 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 Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Choreographer’s Award for Not-About-AIDS-Dance / 1995
• Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship / 1992 

Portfolio

Neil's website

Video of Neil's choreography

From 2015 New Museum Publication - "(Temporary) Collection of Ideas around CHOREOGRAPHY: Neil Greenberg"