Neil Greenberg

Neil Greenberg (born April 17, 1959) is an American dancer, post-modern choreographer, and educator.

At age 20, in 1978, he began studying at the Cunningham studio, and in 1979 he was asked to join the company.

While Greenberg was dancing with Merce Cunningham Dance Company, he began presenting dances at the Cunningham Studio, and later at St. Mark's Church.

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".

His dance "Amnesty", that premiered in 1985, was the first work of his to receive substantial attention.

It featured Greenberg alongside former Cunningham dancer Louise Burns, as well as Janet Panetta and Susan Blankensop.

One critic theorized that perhaps the title was a reference to Greenberg's differentiating himself from the Cunningham Company, which he was still a part of at the time.

This hypothesis manifested the following spring when Greenberg made his first piece after leaving the company, entitled "Morphine".

His next dance, "Macguffin, or How Meaning Gets Lost" (1987) shows Greenberg's early use of film as inspiration, later seen in his dances "This is What happened" (1999) and "Sequel" (2000).

Greenberg has spoken about being influenced by Alfred Hitchcock in terms of using techniques found in suspense films, as well as filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini and Martin Scorsese.

Macguffin was also the first dance of Greenberg's to employ the use of text projections, a device that can be seen in many of his subsequent works.

Not-About-AIDS-Dance is the dance that Greenberg is most readily identified with.

The trilogy in its entirety was presented as part of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Project.

Critic Ann Daly wrote that the trilogy is like "a serial novel choreographically re-imagined for the age of AIDS", as it tracks the history of the company and the dancers over the course of four years.

Premiered in 1994, the year that AIDS became the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, as well as the year that Greenberg lost eight of his friends as well as his older brother to AIDS.

Greenberg has said that the enigmatic title has to do with his brother, Jon Greenberg, an AIDS activist, who "didn't want his death to be about George Bush or Bill Clinton or even AIDS".

In N-A-A-D, Greenberg continues his use of text projections, the projections revealing intimate facts about the dancers onstage.

One such fact that is revealed is Greenberg's own HIV status, which he had not previously publicly disclosed.

Dance critic Randy Gener wrote that N-A-A-D is an "immortality-project" [a reference to one of the projections in the dance] about a dance in progress- about the haphazard ways the evolution of a piece is disrupted by cruel facts in the universe, about how the road to creation is rife with bumps, digressions, flashbacks, and stark signposts, of which AIDS is one of the most horrifying". The dance has been referenced alongside Bill T. Jones's landmark dance Still/Here, which premiered 6 months after "N-A-A-D." These two dances were the topic of critical analysis of in David Roman's book Performance in America.

"The Disco Project" premiered a year after "N-A-A-D", in 1995.

As the title suggests, the dance uses disco music that references the popular culture that was prevalent when Greenberg first came to New York City in the '70s.

For his work he received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (1997).

Greenberg began dancing at age 4, studying tap at the Nancy Raddatz Dance School, where his older siblings took lessons.

At age 11 he began studying ballet and Graham-based modern at the Minnesota Dance Theatre.

During this time, Greenberg first saw the Twyla Tharp company, which piqued his interest in post-modern dance.

At 17, he left Minnesota to study at Juilliard.

He auditioned for the Twyla Tharp company after moving to New York City and was asked to study at the school the company was starting.

After his first year at Juilliard, Greenberg danced with the Eliot Feld Company (now known as Ballet Tech) for a summer (where he danced with Mark Morris).

After leaving Eliot Feld, he began studying Cechetti Technique with Janet Panetta, whom he studied with, and later assisted, for 13 years.

Greenberg danced with multiple choreographers at this time; Patrice M. Regnier and Rush Dance, Rachel Lampert & Dancers, and Manuel Alum.

At this time, Greenberg took his first Cunningham class with June Finch.

He was drawn to the straightforward, anti-narrative approach of the movement and choreography.

"Part Three (My Fair Lady)" premiered in 1997, as part of a trilogy with "N-A-A-D" and "The Disco Project".

It shared in themes of the other two dances, abstract movement vocabulary paired with snippets of text that underscore the dance with intimacy and loss.

A new section of "Part Three", entitled "Judy Garland", was added in 1997, and the final section, "Luck", was added in 1998.

) 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. 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. 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.

Not-About-AIDS-Dance was revived in 2006, the 25th anniversary year of the first reported case of AIDS.

While the work had few updates, the fact of 11 years passing gave it a radically different context, due to developments in the lives of the dancers as well as the difference in the role of AIDS in the United States.

As one reviewer writes, in regards to the impact of the N-A-A-D revival, "11 years ago it was current events. Now it is history".