Craig Harris is a composer, new-media artist, and specialist in non-profit arts development and management. His artwork includes works for concert performance, dance-theater, performance art, multimedia, and art installation. Harris has been Executive Director of the Minneapolis-based dance-theater company Ballet of the Dolls since 1999, and is Executive Director of The Ritz Theater Foundation. He has been Executive Director of Leonardo (the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology) and President of the International Computer Music Association, and has been a consultant to universities and non-profit arts organizations on three continents. Harris is a founder and former Executive Editor of Leonardo Electronic Almanac, an online journal, and holds a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music.
Harris’ electroacoustic work, The Hill Has Something to Say, commissioned by soprano Renée Fleming, was premiered at Alice Tully Hall in May 2000. His ballets The Red Shoes and Sleeping Beauty were created for choreographer Myron Johnson and Ballet of the Dolls, and mounted in Minneapolis in 2001 and 2003, respectively. His book Art and Innovation, documenting collaborations between artists and research scientists at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), was published in 1999 by MIT Press. In May of 2006 he completed renovation of the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis and opened this new performing arts and education center serving local small to mid-sized performing groups and independent artists.