Museum of Modern Art Releases RALPH LEMON, A New Series

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 forty years. A polymath and shape-shifter, 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.