Laura Foreman (died 2001) was a dancer, choreographer,
visual artist, writer and director of dance at
New School University
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
. She lived and worked in New York City from the mid-1960s until her death.
Biography
Foreman worked primarily in dance for the first decade of her time in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, operating both the
Laura Foreman Dance Company and
Composers' and Choreographers' Theatre with her husband,
John Watts. In the late 1970s she began working in more abstract
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
and visual art. Perhaps her most well-known piece was 1981's "
Wallwork," a collaboration with Watts which took the form of a rigorous
advertising campaign for a nonexistent performance.
After Watts's death in 1982, Foreman's work shifted towards visual art and writing. Two of her written pieces, "A Little Bell Gone Berserk" and "Stuff", were published in The Act in 1987. She created an extensive sculpture series, "Birdhouse as Metaphor," which consisted of numerous functional and non-functional
birdhouses and showed in 1990 at
Souyun Yi Gallery. In 1997, Close Encounters, a volume of Foreman's short stories, was published by
Outloud Books.
Foreman died of cancer in Manhattan in 2001.
Dunning, Jennifer "Laura Foreman, 64, Director of Dance at The New School", ''The New York Times'', July 5, 2001.
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Stage works
*Solo Suite (1967)
*A Time (1968)
*Perimeters (1969)
*Untitled (1970)
*Epicycles (1970)
*Signals (1970)
*glass and shadows (1971)
*Laura's Dance (1971)
*Songandance (1972)
*Margins (1972)
*Spaces (1972)
*Locrian (1973)
*Performance (1973)
*city of angels (1974)
*a deux (1974)
*Postludes (1974)
*Bud / Monopoly (1975)
*Program (1976)
*Heirlooms (1977)
*Entries (1978)
Artworks
*TimeCoded Woman (1979–80)
*Coney Island Cray-Pas (1981)
*Philadelphia Story (1981)
*Poetry Peep Show (1981)
*Roomwork (1981)
*Wallwork (1981)
*Reclining Nudes (1982)
*Sweet Land of Liberty (1983)
*Word Painting / I have nothing to paint and I'm painting it (1983)
*Birdhouse as Metaphor (1989–93)
*Cry Uncle (1991)
*Window on the World (1995)
*Shacks of America (undated)
Written works
*A Little Bell Gone Berserk (1987)
*Stuff (1987)
*A Message to Michael (1990)
*Close Encounters (1997)
References
External links
Laura Foreman and John Watts papers
Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foreman, Laura
2001 deaths
American female dancers
Dancers from New York (state)
American choreographers
American sculptors
The New School faculty
Year of birth missing
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
American women academics