Elizabeth Streb is a choreographer, performer and teacher of contemporary dance.

Streb was born and raised in Rochester, New York and, after graduating from the dance program of State University of New York at Brockport in 1972, she was interested in experimental works and worked and performed for many years with investigational groups including Molissa Fenley’s. She also worked and performed with Margaret Jenkins in San Francisco for two years before relocating back to New York City. In 1975, upon her arrival in New York City, Streb created her dance company STREB/ Ringside. In 2003, Streb established SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which created a new outlet for the community where people could come and watch rehearsals and even participate in classes.

In 1996 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 1997, she was awarded a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (sometimes called a “Genius” grant), two New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards, and grants from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Mellon Foundation.

Streb is known for “A preoccupation with movement and itself was symptomatic of a trend that was altering the traditional profile of modern dance.”

She has been creating works from 1975 to the present and is known for her outrageous risk taking and experimental shows she puts on. Streb includes risk into all of her choreography, giving the audience sensations of extreme feelings while watching the performers. She inquired about movement and the suppositions that the dance world created; and integrated actions and principles of the circus, rodeo, and daredevil “stunts.” She grew up participating in extreme sports, therefore she associates a lot of her work with athletics; for example, skiing and motorcycling.

She wanted to gain a better understanding of the effects of movement on matter so she studied math, physics, and philosophy as Dean’s Special Scholar at New York University. Custom-made trapezes, trusses, trampolines, and a flying machine give Streb a way to discover new ways for the body to move in space while being subjected to gravity and other indistinguishable forces. Moves consist of diving off 16-foot-high (4.9 m), metal scaffolding, also known as a “truss”, landing level on a mat. The performers also can be found launching through the air in “Quick succession with timing so precise that they just miss occupying the same space at the same time.”

Streb’s work is extremely demanding and necessitates endurance, dexterity, great physical strength and the ability to be daring. Streb focuses progressively more on single actions, particularly falls and collisions.

In her recent years, productions have become less harsh and she has begun incorporating texts, videos, and projections of slides. Within her video collaborations, she incorporates camera angles that appear to evade gravity and making the dancers bound off and crash into the edges of the monitors. They also are often swung from cables and are seen leaping off platforms or hurling against padded walls or mattresses. The dancers who are trained under Elizabeth Streb are taught to follow movement’s natural force to the edge of real danger. Collaborators on the videos include Mary Lucier, Nick Fortunato, and Michael Macilli

Communication between dancers includes verbal cues and in place of music the dancers’ grunts and gasps were electronically recorded and amplified as well as the thuds of their landings and the clank and clatter of the stage equipment. With her newer choreography, Streb incorporates music as a part of the show being experienced by the audience. However, she has always upheld that “[m]ovement has its own timing, unrelated to music.” Streb has always tried to contact more than just usual dance audiences.

She is also known for generally seeking out performance spaces that are out of the norm for most dance performances. Her works are showcased at high art venues such as the Lincoln Center , the Spoleto Festival, or the French Festival Paris quartier d’été but also Grand Central Station, the boardwalk at Coney Island in New York, and in a mall in front of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.[5]

Streb has expressed her philosophy thus: “Go to the edge and peer over it. Be willing to get hurt, but not so hurt that you can’t come back again.”

www.streb.org

Share This