Neil Greenberg

Neil Greenberg has been creating dances since 1979. He came to New York from Minnesota in 1976 and danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1979 to 1986. He formed Dance by Neil Greenberg in 1986, and his choreography has since been presented in over twenty New York City productions and on tour. His work Not-About-AIDS-Dance (1994), which employs his signature use of projected words as a layering strategy, complicates the performance moment while also opening doors into potential meanings in the dance. Other projects include Really Queer Dance With Harps (2008), (like a vase) (2010), and This (2014). His FCPA grant supported the production of six works: Part Three (My Fair Lady), Part Three (Judy Garland), Part Three (Luck) at Playhouse 91, Not-About-AIDS-Dance, The Disco Project, and This Is What Happened at Performance Space 122.

Subsequent to receiving his 1997 FCPA grant, he received a National Dance Project Production grant (2004), support from the MAP Fund (2005, 2007), and a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Award (2009). Greenberg has created two commissioned works for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project and two works for Ricochet Dance Company of London. His works Two, in 2003 and Not-About-AIDS-Dance, in 1994, have twice been cited as among the Ten High Points of the Year in The New York Times. Prior to his 1997 Grants to Artists award, Greenberg received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1992), two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie" Awards (1995, 2005), as well as repeated fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1996), the New York Foundation for the Arts (1990, 1996), and the New York State Council on the Arts (1990-1998).

Greenberg is currently a Professor of Choreography at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and has previously taught at Purchase College, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of California, Riverside. He served as dance curator at The Kitchen from 1995 to 1999.

Presenters and participants included New School professors Ivan Raykoff, Philip Silva, Danielle Goldman, Neil Greenberg, Victoria Marshall, and Robert Sember; PARK collaborators Kathy Westwater, Seung Jae Lee and Jennifer Scappetonne; iLAND board members Elliott Maltby, Kate Cahill, Carolyn Hall and Julia Handschuh, Jennifer Monson; choreographer and improviser Susan Sgorbati, social scientist at the U.S. Forest Service, Erika Svendson; artist Kyle deCamp. Performance created by Athena Kokoronis. Workshops by E.J. McAdams; Liz Barry, Jessica Einhorn and Lailye Weidman of Higher E.D.; and Clarinda Mac Low of River to Creek.

Overview

Moving Into the Out There is iLAND’s fourth annual symposium on dance, movement, and the environment. The two-day event in the heart of New York City brings together dancers, choreographers, designers, ecologists, advocates, and scientists for interactive panel discussions, field workshops, and networking opportunities. This year’s symposium features an in-depth review of PARK, an environmental performance project at Fresh Kills Landfill supported by the 2011 iLAB Residency. Moving Into the Out There will also highlight iLAND’s recent efforts to synthesize insights and discoveries from the past seven years of iLAB collaborative residencies. Detailed event descriptions are attached.

Moving Into the Out There is an open forum for exploring new methods of understanding urban ecosystems through innovative collaborations between practitioners of movement, dance, science, and environmental management. iLAND cultivates a deeper engagement with urban environmental issues through its cross-disciplinary approach, and the annual symposium invites the general public to experience and explore recent works emerging from the iLAND community. Moving Into the Out There features the work of iLAND’s 2011 iLAB Residency, opening up the results of that collaborative experience to a wider audience for discussion.

Throughout the Symposium, participants share in the process of searching for shared language and collaborative processes that cut across the arts and sciences, focusing on dance and the body as primary mediators of experience, imagination, and knowing. Through Moving Into the Out There iLAND aims to generate conversation about collaborative practice throughout communities of art and science, instigating new ways of understanding and intervening in contemporary environmental problems – particularly those related to over-development and climate change.