Ralph Lemon

A multimedia performance including film, live narration and dance, How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? explores loss and transcendence experienced in human partnerships. Reflecting on his relationship with 102-year-old former sharecropper, carpenter and gardener Walter Carter and Andrei Tarkovsky’s science fiction classic, Solaris, Lemon and 6 dancers create a performance which arcs from turbulent physicality to restorative grace. 

Lemon makes his long-overdue Seattle debut after steadily creating a reputation as one of the most important postmodern performance creators. Lemon’s process-focused creations have long been noted for their sumptuous design and their ability to handle complex subject matter in simple yet poetic ways. Following his Geography Trilogy, performances which spanned a decade and multiple continents, Lemon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009.

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? was co-commissioned by OtB, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Walker Arts Center. How Can You Stay…is a co-production of Cross Performance Inc and MAPP International Productions.

This performance is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation.

Performance Prospectus: A complete guide to Ralph Lemon [PDF]

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywehere was filmed for OntheBoards.tv and is now available for Stream or Download.