NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announces the first monograph on the dancer and choreographer Ralph Lemon, as part of the new Modern Dance publication series on practicing choreographers. Born in Cincinnati in 1952, Ralph Lemon is one of the most significant figures to emerge from New York’s downtown dance and performance world in the past 40 years. A polymath and shapeshifter, Lemon combines dance and theater with drawing, film, writing, and ethnography in works presented on the stage, in publications, and in museums. He builds his politically resonant and deeply personal projects in collaboration with dance makers and artists from New York, West Africa, South and East Asia, and the American South. Lemon describes his explorations as a “search for the forms of formlessness.”
Ralph Lemon is edited by Thomas J. Lax, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, and features an original photo-essay by Lemon, as well as a range of texts by curators, scholars, and performers, including Doryun Chong, Adrienne Edwards, Kathy Halbreich, Deborah Jowitt, Ralph Lemon, André Lepecki, Fred Moten, Okwui Okpokwasili, Katherine Profeta, Will Rawls, Bartholomew Ryan, and David Velasco. The publication also includes an extensive narrative chronology, a complete list of works, and a selected bibliography.
Lemon founded the Ralph Lemon Company in 1985 and served as its director until its dissolution in 1995. Since that time he has been the artistic director of Cross Performance. In 2004, he completed the 10-year research and performance project The Geography Trilogy, and he has performed on stages and been included in museum exhibitions nationally and internationally. At MoMA, he performed in the exhibition On Line (2011); curated the dance series Some sweet day (2012); and was an Annenberg Artist’s Research Residence (2013–14).
Modern Dance is a new series of monographs exploring dance makers in the 21st century. Each volume focuses on a single choreographer, presenting a rich collection of newly commissioned texts along with a definitive catalogue of the artist’s projects. “We conceived of these books as a way to offer our living dance iconoclasts the same resources afforded the plastic arts,” notes David Velasco, the series editor, in the Preface to Ralph Lemon. “We wanted comprehensive chronologies and sharp, analytic essays grounded in deep research: everything in one place, dedicated to the proleptic, curious other. And so the books follow a monographic protocol, presenting scholarship and expansive textual responses and an easily referenced list of works and bibliography.” The next titles in the series are scheduled for publication in Spring 2017.
Ralph Lemon is published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and available from MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org. It is distributed to the trade by ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and by Thames & Hudson outside the United States and Canada. Paperback, 8 x 10", $29.95. 168 pages, 66 illustrations. ISBN: 978-1-63345-007-3.
