Lisa Nelson

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Lisa Nelson is an American dance-maker, improviser, videographer, and collaborative artist. [1] She was born in New York City in 1949 and currently[ when? ] lives in Northern Vermont. [2]

New York City Largest city in the United States

The City of New York, usually referred to as either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2018 population of 8,398,748 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 19,979,477 people in its 2018 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 22,679,948 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.

Vermont State in the United States

Vermont is a U.S. state in the New England region. It borders the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Vermont is the second-smallest by population and the sixth-smallest by area of the 50 U.S. states. The state capital is Montpelier, the least populous state capital in the United States. The most populous city, Burlington, is the least populous city to be the most populous city in a state. As of 2019, Vermont was the leading producer of maple syrup in the United States. In crime statistics, it has ranked since 2016 as the safest state in the country.

Contents

Dancing life

Lisa Nelson began her training in traditional modern dance and ballet as a child at the Juilliard School in New York City and then Bennington College in Vermont. In the 1970s, she became interested in diverse approaches to dance improvisation, including performing with Daniel Nagrin’s Workgroup in 1971-72. [2]

Modern dance

Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance, primarily arising out of Germany and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ballet form of performance dance

Ballet is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread, highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary based on French terminology. It has been globally influential and has defined the foundational techniques used in many other dance genres and cultures. Ballet has been taught in various schools around the world, which have historically incorporated their own cultures and as a result, the art has evolved in a number of distinct ways. See glossary of ballet.

The Juilliard School is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the world's leading drama, music and dance schools, with some of the most prestigious arts programs.

In 1973, she began a ten year investigation of video and dance from which she developed an approach to spontaneous composition and performance under the name ‘Tuning Scores.’ Beginning in 1974, she took part, along with dancers Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the early evolution of Contact Improvisation, and was a crucial observer of its development through her work with video. [3] In the ensuing decades, she has worked extensively with Steve Paxton, in particular on two improvisation duets that they performed together for several decades: PA RT (1978) and Night Stand (2004).

Steve Paxton American experimental dancer and choreographer

Steve Paxton is an experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. He was a founding member of the experimental group Grand Union and in 1972 named and began to develop the dance form known as Contact Improvisation, a form of dance that utilizes the physical laws of friction, momentum, gravity, and inertia to explore the relationship between dancers.

Nancy Stark Smith American dancer

Nancy Stark Smith is a dancer and founding participant in Contact Improvisation.

Contact improvisation dance movement

Contact improvisation is a form of improvised dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness.

Throughout the 1990s, in collaboration with K. J. Holmes, Karen Nelson [4] and Scott Smith, she developed the ensemble structure of the Tuning Scores, that she teaches internationally. [5]

She is recognized for her editorial and journalistic contributions on dance and improvisation and is the co-editor of the bi-annual dancer's journal Contact Quarterly. [6] Her writings have appeared in Nouvelles de Danse, Contact Quarterly, Writings on Dance, ballettanz, Movement Research Critical Correspondance, and sarma.be. [5]

She received a NY Bessie award in 1987 and an Alpert Award in the Arts in 2002. [5]

The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards are awarded annually for exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City. The broad categories of the awards are: choreography, performance, music composition and visual design. The Bessie Awards were established in 1983.

The Alpert Award in the Arts was established in the 1994 by The Herb Alpert Foundation in collaboration with the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). The foundation provides $75,000 annual fellowship to five artists in the field of dance, film and video, music, theatre, and visual arts.

Bibliography

On Lisa Nelson's work and the Tuning Scores

Writings and interviews with Lisa Nelson

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References

  1. "Lisa Nelson". The Live Legacy Project. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
  2. 1 2 "Lisa Nelson: How Do You Make Dance? - Mn Artists". www.mnartists.org. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
  3. "active archives | Lisa Nelson on Scores". olga0.oralsite.be. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
  4. "bio of Nelson".
  5. 1 2 3 "Lisa Nelson | ID: Independent Dance". www.independentdance.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-25.
  6. "Contact Quarterly nonprofit organization". www.contactquarterly.com. Retrieved 2017-04-25.