Elizabeth Streb

Born to Fly pushes the boundaries between action and art, daring us to join choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her dancers in pursuit of human flight.

Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.

Amphibian was a collaborative video/dance performance by Lucier and choreographer Elizabeth Streb. In this unique fusion of dance and video, Streb performed on a raked platform between two large screens showing different sets of video images. Streb portrays a mythological creature in the process of evolution, moving from water to earth to sky — an amphibious entity in a struggle to defy gravity. Lucier's intuitive landscapes integrate with Streb's athletic choreography to create an abstract yet visceral performance space.

Collaborating with choreographer Elizabeth Streb, Lucier constructs a suite of dances in which the human figure is abstracted and isolated within a natural landscape. Structured in three segments, the work suggests the evolution of a mythical being moving from a black void to a natural landscape, and then into an aerial world. Fragmenting and isolating the physical body in space, or in relation to simple elements of landscape, Lucier evokes themes of confinement, the struggle to defy gravity, and a metaphorical desire for transcendence.