Lila Greene

Born in 1949 in the United States, Lila Greene trained in drama and numerous contemporary dance techniques in California and New York, where she also took part in the performance and choreography of various shows. Arriving in France in 1975, she began to teach contemporary dance and dance and drama improvisation. As well as choreographing several solos during this time, she worked with American artists such as Harry Sheppard and Mark Tompkins, with whom she danced until 1982 in a long series of duets, especially as part of the collective Théâtre Autarcirque and their company, called Productions Lima Dreem. Combining dance and drama, humour and artistic experimentation, they appeared in particular at the Festival Off in Avignon and the Danse Festival in Aix-en-Provence, and above all in Parisian venues such as La Forge, Théâtre 13 and the studio Théâtre d’En Face.

At the same time, Lila Greene worked with the Japanese choreographer Hideyuki Yano, whose preferred performer she was between 1976 and 1986. Her collaboration with Yano also made its mark, and she paid several tributes to the choreographer during the special events organised in his memory (such as the evening dedicated to him at the Saint-Florent le Vieil festival in 1997) and through pieces of choreography (such as Régénérations : pour Yano in 2006).

Lila Greene set up the company Sunsets in 1984, where continued to develop a cross-disciplinary approach, working, for example, from texts by Gherasim Luca in her pieces Arrêts sur la carpe (1997) and le Chant de la carpe (1998), as well as collaborating with the artist Tony Soulié on these same pieces. She also provided the choreography for several directors during the 1990s, in particular Jean Jourdheuil and Jean-Francois Peyret (several pieces by the German author Heiner Müller, for which she was an actor and performer), Jean-Marc Bourg, Jean-Claude Fall and even Luc Sabot, for whom she performed in two of his directorial pieces in Montpellier.

Lila Greene also chooses exterior creation spaces, such as the subterranean banks of the Canal Saint-Martin for Démons  (1984), the heliport of the Lariboisière hospital for L’État des mouches (1985) and even old private mansions in Montpellier for l’Esprit d’escalier (2004), among others.

In addition, her research on the body and movement have led her to become interested in French sign language (in which she went on to train and subsequently work with deaf comedians), the analysis of movement (she has led placements and works alongside Nathalie Schulmann and Odile Rouquet, with whom she created a collection of DVDs on the somatic approaches linked to the arts domain), as well as non-Western approaches. For example, she obtained a degree in 2001 from the Université de Montpellier in Chinese language and civilisation, allowing her to broaden some of her art projects such as her piece entitles L’heure où l’on ne savait rien (2001-2002). Through all these years she has continued a great deal of educational work, leading numerous dance and theatre workshops which have now taken her teaching to Africa and Brazil, where she provides the work of the American foundation she set up in 2003 (the eeg-cowles Foundation).

Updated: September 2014