Deborah Hay began her career in the early 1960’s with the Judson Dance Theatre. In her five decades at the vanguard of choreographic experimentation, she has helped re-define the field of dance with her revolutionary work and influential publications, in particular Lamb at the Altar, Duke University Press, My Body, the Buddhist, and Using the Sky, both published by Wesleyan University Press. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Theater Academy in Helsinki (2009), and was one of the 21 American performing artists to receive the inaugural and groundbreaking 2012 Doris Duke Artist Award. After a 2-year research collaboration with Motion Bank, a project of the Forsythe Company, an online interactive website dedicated to her choreographic aesthetics was launched in June 2013. In collaboration with Laurie Anderson and lighting designer Minna Tikkainen she created an evening length work Figure a Sea, for 21 dancers and commissioned by the Cullberg Company in Stockholm, Sweden, that premiered September 2015. She went on to become an associate artist with the Cullberg Company from 2019 – 2021. In May 2015 France’s Minister of Culture and Communication awarded Hay the title of CHEVALIER DE L’ORDRE DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES. Tanz Im August 2019 presented a RE-Perspective covering Hay’s work from 1968 to the present including two premieres. In 2021 she had a second retrospective of her work In Barcelona at Mercat de les Flors.
