Remy Charlip

Abraham Remy Charlip (January 10, 1929 – August 14, 2012) was an American artist, writer, choreographer, theatre director, designer and teacher. He wrote or illustrated 29 children's books.

Life and career

Charlip studied art at Straubenmuller Textile High School in Manhattan, and fine arts at Cooper Union in New York, graduating in 1949.

In the 1960s Charlip created a unique form of choreography, which he called "air mail dances". He would send a set of drawings to a dance company, and the dancers would then order the positions and create transitions and context, without Charlip's further participation.

Charlip performed with composer John Cage, and was a founder member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, for which he also designed sets and costumes. He directed plays for the Judson Poets Theatre, co-founded the Paper Bag Players children's theater company, and served as head of the Children's Theater and Literature Department at Sarah Lawrence College. Off-Broadway, he was the "Stage Director" of a 1962 production of Bertolt Brecht's Man Is Man for Julian Beck's Living Theatre, for which he received his first of two Obie Awards, and designed the set for the American Place Theatre production of Paul Goodman's Jonah in 1966. He won three New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year citations, and was awarded a six-month residency in Kyoto, Japan from the Japan/U.S. Commission on the Arts.