Elizabeth Streb
Bio
MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, Elizabeth Streb has dived through glass, allowed a ton of dirt to fall on her head, walked down (the outside of) London’s City Hall, and set herself on fire, among other feats of extreme action. Her popular book, STREB: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero, was made into a hit documentary, Born to Fly directed by Catherine Gund (Aubin Pictures), which premiered at SXSW and received an extended run at The Film Forum in New York City in 2014. Streb founded the STREB Extreme Action Company in 1979. In 2003, she established SLAM, the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. SLAM’s garage doors are always open: anyone and everyone can come in, watch rehearsals, take classes, and learn to fly.
Elizabeth Streb was invited to present a TED Talk (‘My Quest To Defy Gravity and Fly’) at TED 2018: THE AGE OF AMAZEMENT. She has been a featured speaker presenting her keynote lectures at such places as the Rubin Museum of Art (in conversation with Dr. John W. Krakauer), TEDxMET, the Institute for Technology and Education (ISTE), POPTECH, the Institute of Contemporary Art (in conversation with physicist, Brain Greene), The Brooklyn Museum of Art (in conversation with author A.M. Homes), the National Performing Arts Convention, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), the Penny Stamps Speaker Series at the University of Michigan, Chorus America, the University of Utah, and as a Caroline Werner Gannett Project speaker in Rochester NY, and gave the 2019 Commencement Speech at Otis College for Arts and Design among others.
Streb was profiled by Alec Wilkinson in an extended essay “Rough and Tumble: Elizabeth Streb’s daredevil dances” for the New Yorker magazine in June 2015, was featured in the Smithsonian Magazine (“The New American Circus”), and in 2019 was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Streb received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award in 1997, a Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, and a USA Fellowship in 2020. She holds a Master of Arts in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, a Bachelor of Science in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport, and honorary doctorates from SUNY Brockport, Rhode Island College and Otis College of Art and Design. Streb has received numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards), in 1988 and 1999 for her “sustained investigation of movement;” and over 35 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). In 2009, Streb was the Danspace Project Honoree. She served on Mayor Bloomberg’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and is a member of the board of the Jerome Foundation.
Major commissions for choreography include: Lincoln Center Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MOCA, LA Temporary Contemporary, the Whitney Museum of Art, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, the Park Avenue Armory, London 2012, the Cultural Olympiad for the Summer Games, CityLab Paris 2018, the opening of Bloomberg’s new headquarters in London, Musée D’Orsay, the re-opening of the Théâtre du Châtelet, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Born to Fly aired on PBS on May 11, 2014 and is currently available on iTunes. OXD, directed by Craig Lowy, which follows STREB at the 2012 London Olympics, premiered at the IFC theater in New York City on February 2, 2016. Streb and her company have also been featured in PopAction by Michael Blackwood, on PBS’s In The Life and Great Performances, The David Letterman Show, BBC World News, CBS Sunday Morning, CBS This Morning, Business Insider, CNN’s Weekend Today, MTV, on the National Public Radio shows Studio 360 and Science Friday, and on Larry King Live.
How to Become An Extreme Action Hero
Elizabeth Streb has been testing the potential of the human body since childhood. Can she fly? Can she run up walls? Can she break through glass? How fast can she go? Combining memoir and theory, Streb conveys how she became an extreme action choreographer, developing a form of movement that’s more NASCAR than modern dance, more boxing than ballet. This book is for those who try or are willing to do just about anything to become a hero in their own way.
Elizabeth Streb
Foreword by Anna Deavere Smith
Introduction by Peggy Phelan
Buy a copy at SLAM or feministpress.org
Also available on AMAZON or Kindle

Press Links
Infinite Body review by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Arts journalist since 1976. Scroll down to read the review.
Grantmakers in the Arts review by John E. McGuirk, the director of the Performing Arts Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Click here to read the review.
Amazon Book Review from Publishers Weekly including “Streb [as] a glorious acrobatic adventure.” The Guardian. Click here to read the review.
Bomb Magazine article from A.M. Homes with an Interview between A.M. Homes and Elizabeth Streb! Click here to read the review.
Born to Fly: ELIZABETH STREB VS. GRAVITY
Elizabeth Streb and STREB Extreme Action form a motley troupe of flyers and crashers. Propelled by Streb’s edict that “anything too safe is not action,” these daredevils challenge the assumptions of art, aging, injury, gender, and human possibility. BORN TO FLY: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity traces the evolution of Elizabeth Streb’s movement philosophy as she pushes herself and her performers from the ground to the sky. Revealing the passions behind the dancers’ bruises and broken noses, BORN TO FLY offers a breathtaking tale about the necessity of art, inspiring audiences hungry for a more tactile and fierce existence.
Lincoln Center, White Light Festival, Post Performance Discussion
with Libby McDonnell and Elizabeth Streb
Thursday, Oct 24 @ 7:30pm
NYU (14 University Place)
Thursday, November 14th @ 6:00pm
The Power of Practice and Learning to Fly
Elizabeth Streb and Dr. John W. Krakauer
Tanz in August
Meeting of Minds with Elizabeth Streb
August 12th @ 5pm (Bibliothek im August)
reSITE 2018 ACCOMMODATE
June 14 – 15, 2018
SITI Thought Center presents Anne Bogart & Elizabeth Streb
September 27, 2017
2017 TCG National Conference
June 9, 2017
Wonderwater Reading
March 18, 2017
The Genius Dialogues
PopAction Master Class at Antioch College
June 10, 2016
Imagining a Future – Shakespeare, a Conversation with Fiona Shaw at the Kennedy Center
June 3, 2016 @7:30pm
Global Cultural District Network Panel at BAM
May 24, 2016
“How to Become an Extreme Action Heroine” at NYU’s Women’s Leadership Forum
May 13, 2016
Talking Duets #2
Mar 19, 2016
BricFlix: Women Behind the Lens
March 9, 2016
Gravity is a Dancer’s Best Friend
APAP Annual Awards Ceremony & Meet the Artist Salon
January 18, 2015
Global Cities at the Crossroads: Commerce, Art, and the Captivating Power of Place
November 19, 2015
Molissa Fenley Book Party
November 15, 2015
One Extraordinary Day, a film by Craig Lowy—World Premiere
November 14, 2015
Lois Greenfield: Photographing Dancers in Motion
November 11, 2015
Mountain Film Festival
May 22-25, 2015
Deconstructing Genius
March 4, 2015 at 8:15pm
Penny Stamps Speaker Series
February 12, 2015
National Arts Marketing Project Conference
Keynote Address
November 9, 2014
DRAMA CLUB: SEAGULLS w/ Public Theatre
October 26, 2014
Risky Talking
October 24, 2014
The Municipal Arts Society of New York (MAS Panel guest)
October 23, 2014
John Jay College (lecture)
October 16, 2014
PEN Awards (judge)
September 29, 2014
Born to Fly Q & A’s
Antioch College
June 9, 2016
Virginia Tech Center for the Arts
September 30, 2015
Jacob’s Pillow
July 5, 2015
Hammer Museum
September 25, 2014
Image Out
October 12, 2014
ICA
October 18, 2014
Granoff Center at Brown
October 20, 2014
Jacob Burns Film Center
October 28, 2014
Houston Cinema Arts Festival
November 15, 2014
Wexner Center for the Arts
January 23, 2015
Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center
February 1, 2015
Athena Film Festival
February 8, 2015