4Walls
Ralph Lemon
Shoko Letton, Mike Taylor, Gesel Mason, Darrell Jones
With 4Walls, Ralph Lemon premieres a live multimedia dance installation that provides four points of view on one dance, giving a new shape to a “dance with no form.”
The basis of the amorphous collaborative work is a play on time, energy, and the disappearing body. Four Walls is an extension of a long-term project that began in 2003 with pieces originally titled Ecstasy and Wall. Lemon's intention for Wall was to create a “dance that disappears”—an attempt, in the words of dramaturge Katherine Profeta, to “fling the body headlong into an instant of pure presence.” Lemon desires to create a work that provides, for viewers, a different kind of engagement in a creative process that is relentless in questioning the nature of what passes between performers and audiences.
Ralph Lemon is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and visual artist. He currently serves as the artistic director of Cross Performance, a company dedicated to the creation of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary performance and presentation.
Lemon’s most recent work, How Can You Stay in The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? (2008-2010) was a four-part project consisting of live performance, film, and visual art. This critically acclaimed work toured cities across the US.
Lemon's solo visual art exhibitions include: 1856 Cessna Road (2012); How Can You Stay In The House All Day And Not Go Anywhere? (2010); (the efflorescence of) Walter (2008); The Geography Trilogy (2001); Temples (2000); and Geography (1997). Group exhibitions include: Move: Choreographing You (2010-11), The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl (2010-2011). Other projects include Paradance (2011), Rescuing the Princess (2009), I Get Lost (2010), and The Geography Trilogy (2007)—a 10-year project encompassing three full-evening dance/theater works.
Lemon is an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Artist Award (2012) and was also one of 50 artists to receive the inaugural Artists Fellowship in 2006. He has received two “Bessie” (NY Dance and Performance) Awards, Foundation for Contemporary Art Awards, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2004 Fellowship with the Bellagio Study. In 1999, he received the CalArts Alpert Award. In 2012, he was honored with one of the first Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards.
Lemon has served as artist-in-residence, fellow, associate artist, and visiting critic at such prestigious universities as Temple, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
4Walls is co-produced by Cross Performance Inc. and MAPP International Productions.
4Walls is commissioned by EMPAC and has been developed during residencies at EMPAC and at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in Tallahassee, FL. 4Walls is also made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
