REMY CHARLIP  was born on this day (d: 2012); Charlip was an American artist, writer, choreographer, theatre director, designer and teacher.

In the 1960s Charlip created a unique form of choreography, which he calls “air mail dances”. He sends a set of drawings to a dance company, and the dancers order the positions and create transitions and context. He performed with John Cage, and was a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for which he also designed sets and costumes. He directed plays for the Judson Poet’s Theater, co-founded the Paper Bag Players and served as head of the Children’s Theater and Literature Department at Sarah Lawrence College.

He won two Village Voice Obie Awards, three NY Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year citations, and was awarded a six-month residency in Kyoto from the Japan/U.S. Commission on the Arts. He wrote and/or illustrated 29 children’s books and lived in San Francisco. Remy Charlip was the model for illustrations of George Melies in the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, written and illustrated by Brian Selznick