2026 RUTH MALECZECH AWARDEES

Neil Greenberg came to New York from Minnesota in 1976 and danced with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1979-1986.  He is known especially for his “Not-About-AIDS-Dance,” which employs his signature use of projected text as a layering strategy that provides doors into “meanings” in the dance, while also raising questions about the nature of meaning-making. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two Bessie Awards, repeated fellowships from the NEA and NYFA, a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a NDP Production grant, a Doris Duke Creative Exploration Award, and repeated support from the MAP Fund and NYSCA.  He has created two works for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. Greenberg has taught at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, UC Riverside, Purchase College and Sarah Lawrence College. He served as dance curator at The Kitchen from 1995-1999. His most recent project, Betsy (2022, La Mama) continues his perhaps utopian interest in moving away from representation toward an experience of the performance moment in and of itself.  He is currently working on “Next Dance,” which will be performed at The Chocolate Factory Theater November 12-21, 2026.

Holly Hughes is a writer and performer who launched her thespian career at the legendary WOW Cafe, after getting her first taste of performance when she was cast as the lead vagina in a site specific feminist ritual in 1979.   They count themselves extraordinarily lucky to have found their way to WOW, then described as a home for wayward girls, and to have been given a direct order by Peggy Shaw to make a performance piece.   The first work, The Well of Horniness, inspired in equal parts by the performances of Split Britches, Ethyl Eichelberger, as well as their complete ignorance about what actually happened in the book whose title they spoof in this work, has been performed across North America, and continues to enjoy multiple productions annually, more than four decades after it was originally presented.  Hughes is also the author of The Lady Dick, World Without End, Clit Notes and Preaching to the Perverted and co-author with Split Britches of Dress Suits to Hire, along with several other titles.    Many of these works were developed in collaboration with luminaries, particularly Dan Hurlin and Lois Weaver.  A recipient of a Lambda Book Award,  a GLAAD Media Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hughes has published four books.    Their most recent work, INDELIBLE, a collaboration with Katie Pearl,  imagines that Hughes has been hired by Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford to solve not only their cases, but all the crimes of the patriarchy. Well, it’s not really fair to say it “imagines,” because Hughes is actually doing it and is pretty far along in their investigations, and has a very clear idea of who exactly victimized Hill and Ford, though they are not at liberty to discuss the ongoing investigation at this time.  For further information, please see the premiere in November in Minneapolis.  Against all odds, Hughes is a Professor at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, with joint appointments in Women and Gender Studies and the Department of Theatre and Drama.