{"id":407991,"date":"2026-07-22T14:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T14:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407991\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T14:27:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T14:27:12","slug":"failing-is-learning-to-fail-better-donna-sternberg-on-being-honored-as-woman-artist-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/407991\/","title":{"rendered":"Failing Is Learning to Fail Better: Donna Sternberg on Being Honored as Woman Artist for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only a handful of dance artists have managed to keep their companies afloat in Los Angeles for more than twenty years. All are women. Donna Sternberg<\/a> is one. As a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of Donna Sternberg & Dancers<\/a>, Sternberg has now received statewide recognition with the Council of 100 announcement that she is their Distinguished Woman Artist for 2026. In the 37 year history of the award, Sternberg is only the second awardee whose art medium involves dance, the rest were visual artists.<\/p>\n

The award is accompanied by a retrospective exhibition at the affiliated Fresno Art Museum<\/a> and ancillary activities include her company performing. The exhibition titled Dancing Through Time: Donna Sternberg, a Retrospective, 1970 to 2026, opens August 1 and runs through January 10, 2027 in the Contemporary Gallery at the Fresno Art Museum. The museum was the first in the United States to devote a full year of their exhibition schedule (1986-1987) exclusively to women artists.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg and Dancers Stephanie Cheung, Joseph Lister in \u201cIron Women\u201d at the Wende Museum \u2013 Photo by Paul Antico.<\/p>\n

Earlier in July, I had the opportunity to interview Sternberg on Zoom where we discussed her career, what it means to be awarded the Council of 100 Distinguished Woman Artist for 2026, and her current and future plans.<\/p>\n

Sternberg said that it was her mother who put her in ballet classes taught by an elderly Russian woman who would whack the students with a wooden stick if they weren\u2019t in the \u201ccorrect\u201d positions, and Sternberg was put on pointe shoes at the very young age of six. After refusing to return to that studio, she was sent to another one that taught ballet and jazz. Sternberg was much happier.<\/p>\n

Sternberg\u2019s ongoing choreographic collaborations with scientists have become a distinguishing aspect of her work. I asked if she was always interested in science.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 Moises Josue Michel in \u201cThe Vortex\u201d \u2013 Artwork by Meredith Tromble \u2013 Screenshot by LADC<\/p>\n

Although her father was a mathematics\/science person, Sternberg was not interested in seeking a career in that field. She did want to be a criminologist and even thought of herself as a Clarence Darrow lawyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a lot of things that I thought I was going to be,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t even think that I was going to be a dancer, but I think that dance chose me. I didn\u2019t think that I had a choice at a certain point, yet I never felt as much myself as I did when I was dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before forming her own company, Sternberg performed in the companies of Donald Byrd, Mary Jane Eisenberg, Yen Lu Wong and Dance\/LA. Sternberg found work created by Mary Jane Eisenberg different, theatrical and contemporary with the way she approached things. Plus, she liked the way Eisenberg moved. Regarding performing Eisenberg\u2019s work, Sternberg said, \u201cYou could take a bite out of it. It had depth to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1985, she formed Donna Sternberg & Dancers. Since then, she has choreographed Thirteen full-evening works, most of which were inspired by science. Her choreography has been commissioned for the California Science Center, SIGGRAPH, Dance Moving Forward Festival, California Choreographer\u2019s Festival, Catlin Gabel School in Oregon, Valley College, Descanso Gardens and the Alleluia Dance Theatre. In 2016, Sternberg was invited to create site-specific work in collaboration with LeeMundwiler architects as part of the Venice Biennale. She has received multiple awards and participated in residencies and dance festivals throughout the US and in Mexico and Costa Rica. For the Costa Rica residency, Sternberg traveled there to create work along with several other artists. She was the only choreographer among visual artists and a sculptor<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 Photo courtesy of the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was an amazing residency,\u201d Sternberg said. \u201cIt was a month in a little city that used to be a snake farm, so there were snakes.\u201d One day she opened the washing machine where she was staying and a snake slithered out of the tub.<\/p>\n

The unstructured residency had no particular project associated with it. The artists could do whatever they wanted within the month. Sternberg traveled around the countryside, mostly by herself. She described one surreal place, Tortuguero<\/a>, that could only be reached by boat and was located in the jungle.<\/p>\n

\u201cTortuguero was exactly what I wanted. I was doing my first big science piece on quantum physics and particularly on string theory,\u201d she said. \u201cIn order to grasp the whole huge concept, I thought I had to really get myself out of my normal environment, into somewhere that was completely different.\u201d The trip to Tortuguero helped her imagine string theory as our existing simultaneously on anywhere from 5 to 13 different planes of existence.<\/p>\n

She also collaborated with Kathi Packer<\/a>, a visual artist about man\u2019s connection to the natural environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say that we love nature but we are also destroying it. And Costa Rica was a good place to see that because they were having a big political to do about a river that they were thinking of damming up, and the populace was up in arms about that.\u201d Sternberg said. By the end, she created a full-length piece using the visual artist\u2019s pieces as a starting point for the work.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg and Dancers in \u201cGravitational Waves\u201d choreography by Donna Sternberg \u2013 Photo by Sarah Catania.<\/p>\n

Dance artists often collaborate with visual artists, musicians, and poets, etc. but working with scientists is rare. For Sternberg, the spark came from one of the discussions that always follow her performances. After one, the videographer Michael J. Masucci<\/a> approached her and expressed interest in collaborating if she ever wanted to create a work exploring her interest in quantum physics. That conversation inspired the long-running, highly praised Awe and Wonder series pairing choreographers and scientists to collaboratively creating dance about scientific concepts. The first scientists she contacted were at Caltech. Sternberg admits that some were not even interested in speaking with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the ones that do are really enthusiastic,\u201d she said. They want to talk about their work because otherwise, who do they ever talk about it with but each other? Also, some of them are smart enough to figure out that their work needs to be known to a greater public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sternberg thinks that one reason people do not trust science is because the work scientists do is not understood by the general public.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a><\/p>\n

One \u2013 Choreography by Donna Sternberg \u2013 Photo by Paul Antico<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I started working with these scientists, I found such a connection between dance and the scientific thirst for discovery,\u201d she told me. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s what a choreographer is doing. We\u2019re just doing a bunch of experiments to find stuff out. One of my science friends said to me, \u2018You know, most science experiments fail and then we learn how to fail better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Sternberg thinks \u2018learning to fail better\u2019 is a great way to look at creating art.<\/p>\n

Sternberg and Masucci have been working together for over 20 years, most recently exploring holograms and dance. They just completed their first holographic duet with one dancer in Los Angeles and another in Omaha.<\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a><\/p>\n

Members of Donna Sternberg and Dancers working on hologram duet \u2013 Photo courtesy of the company.<\/p>\n

We discussed how some of the younger generation of artists have difficulty with receiving criticism about their shortcomings or failures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey think that criticism is abhorrent. Okay, criticism that is nasty is abhorrent.\u00a0 There\u2019s no reason for that, but criticism, if you can digest it, is really a stepping stone to improving your craft,\u201d Sternberg said. \u201cYou can\u2019t get better if all you do is have success and surround yourself with sycophants who tell you that you\u2019re the greatest thing since Swiss cheese. It\u2019s not possible. You have to learn how to fail, the idea of \u2018failing better.\u2019 You won\u2019t take a risk if you\u2019re adverse to failure. I think in today\u2019s society where they give kids trophies, whether they win or lose, it is hard for a lot of these young ones to understand the value of failing. In time they may understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers in \u201cAncestors Voices\u201d \u2013 Photo by Sarah Catania.<\/p>\n

Sternberg confided that thinking rationally, she would not have chosen this path and is astonished that she is still dancing and creating dance works. She mused that Bella Lewitzky stopped when she was 80 and that she herself is \u2018getting up there\u2019, but with so many possibilities that keep on exciting her, she doesn\u2019t want to stop. Her longevity was a factor in Sternberg\u2019s selection for the award.<\/p>\n

Designed to honor women artists who have lived an artful life for decades, the awardee must be a woman 65 years or older. Creativity over time provides a body of work the selection committee can evaluate in deciding among nominees deserving attention. A body of work also providing extended content for the retrospective exhibition that accompanies the award.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 Tongva \u2013 Photo by Denise Leitner<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s executive director and the chief curator, Michele Ellis Pracy<\/a> oversees the retrospective related to the Council of 100 award. In this curator, Sternberg\u2019s selection chanced upon a former dancer turned museum curator equipped to capture dance artist retrospective.<\/p>\n

While not involved directly with the award selection committee, Ellis Pracy works closely with the Committee of 100\u2019s selection process. Nominations come only from the members who have come from all over the state. Historically the award has gone exclusively to visual artists, although in 1994, the award went to the late Rachel Rosenthal whose wide ranging visual, performance, and other artistic endeavors included dance. In that context, Sternberg is regarded as the first to receive the award whose artistic medium is dance.<\/p>\n

Sternberg said that she was floored by receiving this award. \u201cI looked at the past recipients and I\u2019m like, wow, these are some hard hitters here. I was surprised, let\u2019s say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellis Pracy acknowledged the award to Sternberg broke new ground. \u201cI think that the selection committee rose to a challenge in honoring Donna because she wasn\u2019t a two or three dimensional visual artist. I felt very comfortable with it because I spent the first half of my life pursuing dance.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers in \u201cEarth Body\u201d choreography by Donna Sternberg \u2013 Photo by Mara Zaslove<\/p>\n

Ellis Pracy began dancing in the San Francisco Bay area with aspirations and gifts and opportunities headed to a professional dance career. Merce Cunningham spotted her in a workshop and invited her to join his company in New York, until a knee injury intervened. The injury proved very serious and precluded a professional dance career. Unable to become a dancer, Ellis Pracy returned to college, pivoting to her second love, art history. She rose in the art curatorial world at the Oakland Museum, the Ojai Museum, and for the last 11 years at Fresno Art Museum\u2019s Executive Director and Chief Curator. In Ellis Pracy, Sternberg\u2019s award found a curator with the dance background as well as curatorial experience to mount an art museum exhibition effectively capturing artistic work integrally involved with four-dimensional live performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany artists at the age that we select from have never really had this kind of exposure before and want a retrospective. I gave Donna a couple of ideas. We talked about doing a photographic retrospective plus the performance,\u201d Ellis Pracy explained. In addition to the static visual images, Ellis Pracy suggested a video component with the moving images enhancing the immersive nature of the exhibition.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg \u2013 Photo courtesy of the artist.<\/p>\n

For the retrospective, the museum requested digital photos for a career covering more than 40 years. Sternberg had little from her earliest years, and starting in the 1970s there were negatives and some photos, many with low resolution. Museum staff applied current scanning and printing technology to those early negatives and photographs with the resulting revived photographs included in the exhibition.<\/p>\n

For the video component, the curator installed a temporary, freestanding wall in the exhibition gallery. Videos capturing Sternberg\u2019s dancing and choreography will be projected onto the back of the wall. A nearby bench allows visitors to sit for a while and watch the video loop.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe photographs turned out beautifully,\u201d Ellis Pracy reported. \u201cWe could only print some to a certain size because they were so old and so tiny. Yet everything has presence. As a dancer, I could select images that I felt were evocative of Donna\u2019s movement as a soloist or with a group that would intrigue somebody who wasn\u2019t familiar with the dance world. The photographs convey movement, although they are still. And then we\u2019ll have the videos where they can see movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 \u201cThe Vortex\u201d \u2013 Photo courtesy of the company.<\/p>\n

The museum will also host a performance by Sternberg\u2019s company and she hopes to conduct a Moving Workshop, at Fresno State University and Fresno City College, both of which have dance programs. The Moving Workshop was instigated by Sternberg as an outreach to the community and another way to involve people who generally don\u2019t have opportunities to see live dance performances. Sternberg also collaborated with a Meredith Tromble, visual artist and Dawn Sumner, geobiologist on The Vortex, a 20 minute film\u00a0 commissioned by the Mondavi Center for the Arts at UC Davis. The two Bay Area collaborators will take part in a showing and panel discussion about the film which investigates gender, sexual orientation and racial situations in the science community.<\/p>\n

Sternberg shared that when the museum requested that the performance component be a retrospective, she thought about how Ohad Naharin<\/a> put together a decade of his pieces into one work called Decadance #23<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that idea. How can I do that?\u201d she said.\u201d So, I\u2019m playing around with that idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellis Pracy summed up the significance of the award going to a dance artist. \u201cIt is important for our audience to see the award going for a different one of the seven fine arts. Dance doesn\u2019t get the same attention as painting or sculpture.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she values the award, Sternberg describes her ongoing focus as \u201ctrying to survive! In today\u2019s climate where funding is extremely scarce, running a dance company is a true challenge. If I were starting off now, I don\u2019t know if I would have a company,\u201d she continued, \u201cI still think that there are real reasons to have one. I think a company that works together presents work differently than a pickup company. I just think the many hours being together means something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sternberg continues working with holograms, has a new work called Trash, and her next big work about female body image is titled How Do I Live In This Body? \u201cI don\u2019t know any women that are happy with their bodies. How do we break that thinking?\u201d Sternberg challenged.<\/p>\n

\"Donna<\/a><\/p>\n

Donna Sternberg \u2013 Dancer, choreographer, Artistic Director of Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 Photo courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

Dancing Through Time: Donna Sternberg, a Retrospective, 1970 to 2026 will be available for viewing in the Contemporary Gallery at the Fresno Art Museum , 2233 N. First St., Fresno, Sat., Aug. 1, 2026 through Sun., Jan. 10, 2027. Details on the exhibition, the performance, and other events are at the museum website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For information on the history of the Council of 100 & Distinguished Woman Artist,\u00a0 please click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

To learn more about Donna Sternberg, her wide-ranging dance biography is HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To learn about her company, Donna Sternberg & Dancers, please visit their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle in collaboration with Ann Haskins.<\/p>\n

Featured image: Donna Sternberg & Dancers \u2013 Stephanie Cheung in \u201cThe Vortex\u201d \u2013 Artwork by Meredith Tromble \u2013 Screenshot by LADC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only a handful of dance artists have managed to keep their companies afloat in Los Angeles for more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-407991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}