Bio

Elizabeth Streb in 1997 was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award. In 2008, Streb was appointed to the Mayor's Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission, a commission mandated by the City Charter to advise the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. She holds a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport from which she has received an honorary doctorate of fine arts as well. Streb also holds an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College. Elizabeth Streb is the recipient of numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards), in 1988 and 1999 for her "sustained investigation of movement'; and over 20 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Once called the Evel Knievel of dance, Elizabeth Streb's choreography, which she calls "PopAction," intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, the circus, and Hollywood stunt-work. The result is a bristling, muscle-and-motion vocabulary that combines daring with strict precision in pursuit of the public display of "pure movement."

In 2003 Streb established S.L.A.M. (STREB Lab for Action Mechanics) in Brooklyn, NY. S.L.A.M.'s door is literally open for the community to come in and watch rehearsals, take classes and learn to fly. The central idea at SLAM (besides always being public) is to mix three extreme action forms: PopAction, KidAction and Circus Arts.

Streb believes that true movement invention (the rubric of her investigations) happens accidentally with the milling together of strangers and out of the diverse movement voices that accidentally cross paths. SLAM is the Petrie dish that feeds the possibility for these new forms to emerge.