Lacy James was born in Philadelphia to a Quaker doctor and a writer from Virginia. As a child she felt a strong identification with animals and the world of nature. The family soon moved to North Carolina where Lacy grew up writing poems and stories, exploring the woods and learning her first instrument, the cello. After graduating from Swarthmore College, where she majored in English Literature and Religion, Lacy moved back to Philadelphia to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter. There she met producer/engineer Jim Gallagher, who had worked with many diverse artists including Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and Rory Block. With Gallagher's help Lacy began recording at the studios of Gamble & Huff Records. Together they sought out musicians who could relate to the mix of delicacy and passion in her music and produced Lacy's well-received debut album, Lovefeast, released in April 1992. For one of the album's tracks, "Song of Songs," Lacy created a dreamlike Middle Eastern-influenced dance/music video, choreographed by Ronen Koresh, which premiered on the "Independent Images" program of WHYY/Philadelphia. In 1999 her song "White Lion" was selected from among thousands of tracks uploaded to Internet giant MP3.com as the website's Featured Alternative Song; the track was again highlighted as Featured Adult Alternative Song in 2001. This exposure led to a much wider audience for Lacy's music. Her songs are currently played on numerous Internet radio stations, where they have been heard by more than 25,000 people.
While making the Lovefeast CD, Lacy had continued to develop her dancing in classes with the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco). During this time she began to make dances and to compose the music for some of them. She was particularly inspired by the technique of Martha Graham, and in 1992 she moved to New York City to study at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. In 1998, she was chosen to represent the Martha Graham School in the Emergency Fund for Student Dancers benefit concert, performing her own solo choreography gravity flight, for which she had also composed the soundscore. She went on to perform with Isadora's Dance Legacy, Coyote Dancers, the Martha Graham Dance Company's Panorama, Maureen Fleming's Mandala project, and in the lead role of Nocturnae, a dance film selected for public screening by several international film festivals.
Lacy's choreography has been presented in New York, Philadelphia, North Carolina and Germany. She formed Mereminne Dancers in 2000 and since then the company has appeared at many New York City venues including the 92nd Street Y, the International Dance Festival-NYC 2002, the White Room Dance Series, and the Dancers Responding to AIDS Remember Project at St. Mark's Church. The company's debut NYC season took place in September of 2003 at the Theater of the Riverside Church. Most recently, Mereminne Dancers have been guests of the Swarthmore Project, a summer residency at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and have performed as guest artists at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. In 2007 Lacy completed an MFA in choreography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as a teaching assistant in the Dance department. During her time at UNCG, she also studied electronic composition with Mark Engebretson in UNCG's Department of Music and composed the soundscores for several of her recent dances.
|
|
|
|
|