Barbara Dilley

Barbara Dilley (Lloyd) (born 1938) is an American dancer, performance artist, improvisor, choreographer and educator, best known for her work as a prominent member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1963-1968), and then with the groundbreaking dance and performance ensemble The Grand Union, from 1969 to 1976. She has taught movement and dance at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, since 1974, developing a pedagogy that emphasizes what she calls “embodied awareness,” an approach that combines dance and movement studies with meditation, “mind training” and improvisational composition. She served as the president of Naropa University from 1985 to 1993.

Barbara Dilley was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1938. She began dancing early in childhood and by the age of ten was studying with Audrée Estey, who was the founder of the American Repertory Ballet and Princeton Ballet Academy. After high school, Dilley attended classes at the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival before enrolling at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1956. She received a BA from Mt. Holyoke in 1960.

Dilley first came into contact with Merce Cunningham in 1960, while participating in the Connecticut College School of Dance's annual workshop, where the renowned choreographer was in residence with his company. Cunningham asked Dilley to join his company in 1962, but due to a pregnancy she was not actually to join the company until 1963. Dilley was a key member of the Cunningham Dance Company during a very important period for Cunningham, and an exciting time for American dance. While in New York, Dilley was also active with the Judson Dance Theater, and participated in a number of performances, including Steve Paxton’s Afternoon (a forest concert), performed in the October of 1963 in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, in a wooded location near the home of Billy Klüver.

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