WHAT IS STREB?

Elizabeth Streb in 1997 was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award. She holds a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport from which she has received an honorary doctorate of fine arts as well. Streb holds an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College and is currently the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at New York University’s Draper Program, working toward a master of arts in time and space. 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 (www.strebusa.org). S.L.A.M.’s door is literally open for the community to come in,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.
top

COMPANY HISTORY

Founded in 1979, STREB tours extensively throughout the United States and internationally presenting performances and residencies and conducts year-round activity at its home studio/laboratory, the STREB ACTION INVENTION LAB, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

STREB opened the ACTION LAB in January 2003. Housed in a former warehouse, the ACTION LAB is the company’s creative and educational center where new productions are mounted, classes for children and adults are taught in the POP ACTION School and all company activities – rehearsals, demonstrations, workshops – are open to the public.
The company is committed to presenting its work in traditional and non-traditional venues and has been seen in public spaces throughout New York and across the country in such venues as Vanderbilt Hall in New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in New York, in front of the Cyclone at Coney Island, on the mall outside the Smithsonian Institution, during a Minneapolis Twins and New York Yankees game at the Minnesota Metrodome, in the Anchorage under the Brooklyn Bridge, during intermission of the International Squash Tournament finals and at the State of Illinois Center in Chicago.

The company has received numerous awards including annual support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the NY City Department of Cultural Affairs. Throughout its history, STREB has been widely recognized by the philanthropic community and has received major support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Carnegie Corporation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Irvine Foundation, the New York Community Trust/Wallace Funds, Target, Chase and Philip Morris, to name a few. Over the years, several company dancers have been honored with Bessie New York Dance and Performance Awards.

STREB has been seen on the David Letterman Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN Showbiz Today, Nickolodeon, NBC’s Weekend Today, MTV, ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings and on Larry King Live.

top