Artists & Projects Directory
Cross Performance/Ralph Lemon
Ralph
Lemon, an artist who defies categorization, is Artistic Director of Cross
Performance, a company dedicated to the creation of cross-cultural and
cross-disciplinary performance and presentation. Lemon's projects expand the
definition of choreography by crossing and stretching the boundaries between
Western, post-modern dance and other art forms and cultures. For each project,
Lemon builds a team of collaborating artists-from diverse cultural backgrounds,
countries and artistic disciplines-who bring their own history and aesthetic
voice to the work. Projects develop organically, over a period of years, with
frequent public sharings of work-in-progress, and the culminating artworks
derive from the artistic, cultural, historic and emotional material uncovered
in this rigorous creative research process.
In 2005, Lemon concluded The Geography
Trilogy, a decade-long international research and performance
project that spanned three continents as it explored race, history and memory.
The project featured three evening-length dance/theater performances: Geography (1997); Tree (2000); and Come home Charley Patton (2004); two Internet art projects; the publication of two books by Wesleyan University Press; and several
gallery exhibitions. Other recent projects include the three-DVD
set of The Geography Trilogy;
Konbit, a video collage
about Miami's Haitian community; Three, a dance/film created with choreographer Bebe
Miller and filmmaker Isaac Julien; and Persephone, a book with Philip Trager's photographs of
Lemon's choreographic work, with text by Lemon and Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, and
poems by Rita Dove and Eavan Boland.
Lemon is the recipient of a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Work. In 2006, he was one of 50 artists to receive the inaugural United States Artists Fellowship. He has also received a 2005 "Bessie" (NY Dance and Performance) Award in recognition of The Geography Trilogy; a 2004 NYFA Fellowship for Choreography; and a 2004 Fellowship with the Bellagio Study and Conference Center. In 1999, Lemon was honored with the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts. Among his many teaching positions, 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.