NEIL GREENBERG
Professor of Experimental Choreography and Performance
M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College
B.A., Empire State College
neilg@ucr.edu
Phone for the Dance Department (951) 827-3944
Office: ARTS 201
Neil Greenberg has been creating dances since 1979, working primarily in New York City before joining the UCR faculty in 2007. His ongoing choreographic project can be seen as an investigation into the necessarily limited, tentative and temporary nature of meaning-making. Throughout, he’s obsessed with the particular kinds of meaning—sensual, perceptual, ontological—that dance can provide.
He is known especially for his Not-About-AIDS-Dance, for which he received a New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award, which employs his signature use of projected supertitles as a door into potential meanings in the dance. His recent use of projected video is the latest evolution in his experiments juxtaposing non-dance texts with the onstage dance action, as seen in his 2005 collaboration with theater and media artist John Jesurun, Partial View. His aim is to engage the viewer with a layered sensory experience and provide multiple potential points-of-view—both figuratively and literally. He has also collaborated extensively with composer Zeena Parkins and lighting designer Michael Stiller. Their most recent project, Really Queer Dance With Harps, premiered at Dance Theater Workshop (NYC) in June 2008 and was presented by UC Riverside Presents and REDCAT (Los Angeles) in 2009.
He has created over twenty major works for his company, Dance By Neil Greenberg, as well as two commissions for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. His works have twice been heralded as among the Ten High Points of the Year in The New York Times: his dance/video work Two in 2003 and Not-About-AIDS-Dance in 1994. A former dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1979-86), he has taught on the dance faculty of Purchase College (1987-2007) and Sarah Lawrence College. He served as dance curator at The Kitchen, the interdisciplinary performance space in NYC (1995-99), and has served as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the American Masterpieces: Dance - College Component, the Maryland Arts Council, the Movement Research Artist-In-Residence Selection Committee, the Princess Grace Foundation, and on the ”Bessies” committee. Among the many grants he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Grants, Awards and Commissions:
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Award (2009)
Rockefeller / Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund Commissions (2007, 2005)
New York State Council on the Arts Grants (1990-2007)
Harkness Foundation for Dance Grants (1992-2007)
Time Out/New York Dance Audience “Bessie” Award (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)
American Music Center / Live Music for Dance Grant (2004)
BUILD Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts (2003)
Joyce SoHo Artist Residency Fellowship (2002)
Ricochet Dance Company (London), Commissioned Works (2002, 1999)
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 (1995)
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1992)
Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation Grant (1992)
Metropolitan Life Foundation, Emerging Dance Program Award (1991)
Meet The Composer, Composer/Choreographer Project Commission (1991)
Jerome Foundation First Light Program Commission (1991)
New York State Council on the Arts/ Danspace Project Commissions (1988, 1986)
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