Geography has been commissioned by Yale Rep in cooperation with 651, An Art Center and the National Dance Project, a project of the New England Foundations for the Arts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and Philp Morris Companies Inc. Geography has also been funded in part by Africa Exchange, an international program of 651, An Art Center generously supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation; and by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Multi-Art Production Fund. Geography was developed in part with support from the New York State Task Force on Partnerships in Dance, made possible by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts Dance Program. Additional support for the world premiere of Geography at Yale Repertory Theatre has been provided by AT&T.

Directed and choreographed by Lemon, Geography was commissioned by Yale Rep in the fall of 1996. The work has undergone an extensive 14-month research and workshop period in Le CÙte d’Ivoire, West Africa; New Haven; Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Lexington, N.Y. After the Yale Rep engagement, Geography will travel to the University of Texas at Austin, Duke University (Durham, N.C.), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minn.), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music/Majestic Theater (N.Y.).

"I see Ralph Lemon’s Geography as the perfect opening for our 1997-98 season," said Yale Rep Artistic Director Stan Wojewodski, Jr. "Ralph has assembled a group of collaborative artists from around the world whose passion, intelligence, and virtuosity promise an extraordinary evening of theater."

Geography began in Australia in 1989 while I was watching two aboriginal dancers teach a group of dancers who were not aboriginal, but who were eager to learn," said Lemon. "The small blue-black man and woman would shelter in a corner of the studio in Sydney, for from their private northern landscape, communicating in complete silence until it was time for them to teach their dance.

In Geography Lemon explores perceptions of racial and cultural identities and how an identity is translated, divided, subsumed and empowered by another, culturally foreign aesthetic. Lemon investigates how race, politics and cultural differences clash, inform, and intersect with his own human and aesthetically formal concerns as a performing artist. He says His primary motivations in creating this work are the apparent African and post-African connections to his life as an African American and the realities of separateness that exist in completely different black worlds. As an African American removed from any African culture by many generations, Lemon says he seeks an opportunity to experience cultural commonality, an intersection of his life and work with that of African dance and performance.

"On some level I felt obliged to make art. Beyond that attempt is the truth of trying to understand something other than what I have known," said Lemon. "Geography is, in part, a performance, but it is equally and importantly an anthropological collaboration about being American, African, brown, black, blue black, male and artist."

Lemon choreographed for and performed with his company, Ralph Lemon Company, From 1985 until 1995. The ensemble presented annual New York seasons, toured extensively in the United States and internationally, and was commissioned to create new works by such leading institutions as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, and the Columbia College Dance Center in Chicago. Beginning in 1995 Lemon decided to move out of the standard dance company structure and undertake new approaches to creating work which experiment in the intersection of dance/choreography with other art forms and social/political issues. These projects are now emerging as collaborations in film, video, publishing, theater, and new technologies.

Joining Lemon in performance will be a cast of nine dancers/actors and percussionists from CÙte d’Ivoire, Guinea and the United States. Four performers come from Groupe Ki-Yi M’bock de Werewere Liking; they are DjÈdjÈ DjÈdjÈ Gervais, Nai Zou, Goulei TchÈpoho, and Zaoli Mabo TapÈ. Two performers, Akpa Yves Didier "James" and Kouakou Yao "Angelo," come from L’Ensimble Koteba d’Abidjan. Djeli Moussa Diabate is a native of Guinea now living in the U.S., and Carlos Funn is from the United States.