Neil Greenberg (choreographer)

Neil Greenberg (born April 17, 1959)^[1] is an American dancer, post-modern choreographer, and educator. He danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for seven years, from 1979 to 1986 before establishing his own company, Dance by Neil Greenberg in 1986.

Greenberg's work is characterized by a "choreographic lexicon that integrates kinesthetic, emotional, and cognitive ways of knowing and representing the world and the self".^[2]) Within this framework, Greenberg's work deals with the queer male body dancing, a theme that has been implicit throughout his dance making and began to become explicitly identified starting with Quartet for Three Gay Men (2006) and extending into his subsequent dances.^[3] Much of the movement in his choreography is based on improvisation and is reflective of his in depth study of somatic techniques, such as Body/Mind Centering, Klein Technique, and Alexander Technique. However, Cunningham's influence can be seen in Greenberg's practice of working with the non-fiction of the body on stage and combining different elements, such as movement, projection, and sound, that leave the responsibility of meaning-making up to the audience.^[4] Greenberg has created over 20 works for Dance by Neil Greenberg, as well as additional commissions for Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, Ricochet Dance Company, John Jesurun's Chang in a Void Moon, and various colleges across the country. For his work he received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (1997).^[5]