About

Lance Gharavi

Lance is an experimental artist, scholar, Professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre, and Associate Director of the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University.

An early pioneer in the field of digital performance, Gharavi specializes in leading collaborative, transdisciplinary teams of artists, scientists, designers, and engineers to create original and innovative experiences. Recent projects have involved robots, architectural projection, social media, 3D projections, seismic data, and planetarium systems. Much of Gharavi's artistic work focuses on intersections of art and science. His efforts make scientific research and history legible to the general public, query the implications of scientific theories and technological innovations, and develop ways for scientists, designers, and engineers to collaborate to advance research and produce compelling experiences. 

Gharavi's scholarship on religion, technology, and performance has been published around the world and in several languages. His work appears in journals including Theatre Topics, Modern Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Ecumenica, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, PAJ, Esoterica, and Performance Matters. He is the author of Western Esotericism in Russian Silver Age Drama(New Grail 2008), editor of the anthology Religion, Theatre, and Performance: Acts of Faith(Routledge 2012), and the translator for the special 100-year anniversary edition of Aleksandr Blok's symbolist masterpiece, Roza I Krest(Tsentr Knigi Rudomino 2013), published in Moscow. He collaborated with EarthScope—the largest solid Earth science project ever funded by the National Science Foundation—to write a children's book about earthquakes. His ongoing research project into robotics and performance, Ars Robotica, was selected as a Transdisciplinary Exemplar by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru). He recently premiered a work with a team of artists and physicists on a project about the Earth's deep interior called Beneath, and he’s currently working on projects about the future of humans in space. He is the recipient of the Bridge Initiative: Women in Theatre 2018 Ally of the Year for his efforts in promoting diversity in the arts.