Ralph Lemon graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1975 with a BA in English Literature and Theater Arts. He was a founding member of The Mixed Blood Theater Company of Minneapolis as well as a member of the Wigman-inspired environment of the Nancy Hauser Dance Company. He moved to New York City in 1979 and performed with Meredith Monk/The House from 1979-81. He produced his first evening-length concert at the Cunningham Studio in 1981 and formed the Ralph Lemon Company in 1985. The Ralph Lemon Company presented annual New York seasons and toured extensively in the United States and internationally from 1985-1995. Mr. Lemon has won several awards for his choreography, including eight Choreographer Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, an American Choreographers Award, the Gold Medal in the 1988 Boston International Choreography Competition, and a 1987 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award. He has collaborated with composers John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Anthony Davis, Chris Hyams Hart, Francisco Lopez, Vernon Reid, and Frank Zappa. Mr. Lemon has been commissioned to create works for companies including the Batsheva Dance Company, the Lyon Opera Ballet, the Sydney Dance Company, the Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, and the Limon Dance Company. With the 1995-96 season, Mr. Lemon decided to move out of the standard dance company structure. He is undertaking new approaches to creating work that experiments in the intersection of dance/choreography with other art forms and social/political issues. These projects are currently taking the form of collaborations in film, video, art publishing, theater and new technologies. Persephone, a book published in 1996 by Wesleyan University Press, includes photographs by Philip Trager, poems by Rita Dove and Eavan Boland and text by Lemon and Andrew Szegedy-Maszak. Konbit, a video documentary collage about the Haitian community in Miami, was created in collaboration with Lionel Saint Pierre, DanEl Diaz and Zao. Mr. Lemon is currently working on the second part of a trilogy entitled Geography, based on his performance research in China, India, and Japan.