Liz Lerman

Liz Lerman (born 1947 in Los Angeles, CA) is an American choreographer and founder of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange .^[1][2][3]

From a piece about her days as a go-go dancer in 1974 to a recent investigation of origins that included putting dancers in the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, she has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others.

Career

Lerman founded the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and led the company's multi-generational ensemble until July 2011, when Lerman passed the leadership of her company to Cassie Meador,;^[4] the company is now called simply Dance Exchange.^[5] .^[6]

Under Liz's leadership Dance Exchange appeared across the U.S. in locations as various as the National Cathedral,^[7] Kennedy Center Opera House,^[8] and Millennium Stage,^[9] Lansburgh Theater,^[10] Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center,^[10][11] Harvard University,^[12] and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.^[13][14]

Lerman's early work was strongly associated with the inclusion of older people alongside more traditional young performers,^[15] and with the use of personal narrative (citation required). Her later-career work has focused on questions of science from genomics^[16] to high-energy physics^[17] to the physical and psychic wounds of war.^[18]

In addition to her work as a choreographer, Lerman created the Critical Response Process, a method for giving and receiving feedback. Lerman developed the Process (or CRP) in 1990 and formalized it through the publication of the book "Critical Response Process: getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert" in 2003^[19] which Lerman wrote with co-author John Borstel. Critical Response Process has a significant international presence, with institutional hosts including the Innovative Conservatoire,^[20] the Federation of Scottish Theatres,^[21] the London Sinfonietta,^[22] the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Yorkshire Dance^[23] in addition to US hosts such as the Yale School of Drama^[24] and the Tisch School for the Arts.^[25] CRP facilitator-cohorts are in development in Scotland ^[26] and in Baltimore, Maryland.^[27] In 2014 Yorkshire Dance developed a beta-version of an online-adaptation of CRP, called "_respond."^[28]

Lerman conducts residencies on the Critical Response Process, creative research, the intersection of art and science, and the building of narrative within dance performance at such institutions as Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Theatre Studio among many others.

In January 2016 Liz Lerman joined the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona as Institute Professor to lead programs and courses that span disciplines across ASU.^[29]

Awards

• 2015 American Dance Guild Lifetime Achievement Award^[30]
• 2014 Dance/USA Honor Award ^[31]
• 2011 United States Artists Fellow ^[32]
• 2002 MacArthur Fellows Program
• American Choreographer Award
• American Jewish Congress "Golda" Award
• 1988 Washingtonian of the Year, by Washingtonian magazine

Performances

Works

Premiere performance site also listed.

1974

• New York City Winter, St. Mark's Danspace, New York, NY
• Approaching Simone (choreography for a play by Megan Terry), Washington Area Feminist Theater, Washington D.C.

1975

• Women of the Clear Vision, Hand Chapel, Mount Vernon College, Washington D.C.

1976

• Memory Gardens, Washington Center for the Arts, Washington D.C.

1977

• Ms. Galaxy and Her Three Raps with God, Baltimore Theatre Project, Baltimore, MD

1978

• Elevator Operators and Other Strangers, Dance Exchange, Washington D.C
• Still Life with Cat and Fingers, Dance Exchange, Washington D.C.
• Goodbye Wisconsin, Dance Exchange, Washington D.C.
• Bonsai, National Arboretum, Washington D.C.

1979

• RSVP, O'Neill Choreographers' Conference, Waterford, CT
• Who's on First?, City Dance/Warner Theater, Washington D.C.
• Pollution Dances, McPhearson Square, Washington D.C

1980

• Fanfare for the Common Man, City Dance/National Mall, Washington D.C.
• Journey 1-4, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington D.C.

1981

• Current Events, Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• Songs and Poems in the Body: In the Gallery, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.

1982

• Docudance: Reaganomics (No One Knows What the Numbers Mean), Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• Songs and Poems in the Body: In the Text, Dance Place, Washington D.C.

1983

• Docudance: Nine Short Dances About the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters, Marvin Center, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
• Variations on a Window, New Music America/Old Post Office Pavilion, Washington D.C.
• Pavane for Two Older Women, New Music America/Old Post Office Pavilion, Washington D.C.

1984

• Second Variation on a Window, Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• E. Hopper, Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• Ives & Company, National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.
• Space Cadet, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington D.C.

1985

• The Transparent Apple and the Silver Saucer, Sidwell Auditorium, Washington D.C.

1986

• Russia: Footnotes to a History, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
• Still Crossing, Liberty Dances in Battery Park, New York, NY
• Black Sea Follies, Lenox Arts Center, Lenox, MA

1987

• Atomic Priests: Coming Attractions, DAMA Theater, Washington D.C.
• Sketches from Memory, DAMA Theater, Washington D.C.
• Atomic Priests: The Feature, DAMA Theater Workshop, New York, NY

1988

• Ms. Appropriate Goes to the Theater, Dance Place, D.C.

1989

• Reenactments, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.
• Floating Hand, Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• Five Days in Maine, Maine Festival, Portland, ME

1990

• May I Have Your Attention Please! Union Station, Washington D.C.
• Docudance 1990: Dark Interlude, 14th Street Danscenter, New York, NY
• The Perfect Ten, Serious Fun! at Lincoln Center, New York, NY
• A Life in the Nation's Capital, Dance Place, Washington D.C.
• Anatomy of an Inside Story, Dance Place, Washington D.C.

1991

• Short Stories (version 1), The Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
• Short Stories (version 2), American Dance Festival, Durham, NC
• Untitled, Meredith College, Raleigh, NC
• The Good Jew? Israeli/Jewish American Dance Festival, Boston, MA
• Untitled (site-specific), Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.

1992

• The Awakening (collaboration with Kimberli Boyd), McKinley High School, Washington D.C.

1993

• Incidents in the Life of an Ohio Youth, BalletMet, Columbus, OH
• This Is Who We Are, Marvin Center, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
• Spelunking the Center (collaboration with Tom Truss), Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C.

1994

• Safe House: Still Looking (theatrical version), Cowell Theater, San Francisco, CA
• Safe House: Still Looking (site-specific), Friends Meeting House, Wilmington, DE

1995

• Flying Into the Middle, Joyce Theater, New York, NY
• Shehechianu: Faith and Science on the Midway, Lansburg Theatre, Washington D.C.
• Room for Many More (collaboration with Kimberli Boyd), Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL
• Portsmouth Pages, Music Hall, Portsmouth, NH

1996

• Sustenance Dance (collaboration with Michelle Pearson), Mayfair Festival of the Arts, Allentown, PA
• The Music Hall's Shipyard Project, Music Hall/Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, NE/Kittery/ME
• Shehechianu: Bench Marks, Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
• Nocturnes, Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
• Light Years, Intelsat Headquarters, Washington D.C.
• Fresh Blood, Queens Theatre in the Park, Washington D.C.

1997

• Shehechianu: Skin Soliloquies, Lansburgh Theater, Washington D.C.

1998

• Fifty Modest Reflections on Turning Fifty, Gammage Auditorium, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
• Pas de Dirt, Garde Arts Center, New London, CT
• White Gloves/Hard Hats, Garde Arts Center, New London, CT
• Moving to Hallelujah, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
• Getting to Hallelujah, Garde Arts Center, New London, CT

1999

• Hallelujah: Gates of Praise, Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington D.C.
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Animals and Their People, George Washington University, Washington D.C.

2000

• Hallelujah: First Light, The dock, Eastport, ME
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Ordinary Prophets (collaboration with Peter DiMuro), University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Fertile Fields (collaboration with Martha Wittman), Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Beckett, MA

2001

• Hallelujah: Stones Will Float, Leaves Will Sink, Paths Will Cross, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Constancy in the Midst of Change, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington, VT
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Beauty and Disorder, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN
• Hallelujah: In Praise of the Creative Spirit, Bates Dance Festival, Lewiston, ME
• Hallelujah: In Praise of Paradise Lost and Found, University Musical Society, Ann Arbor, MI

2002

• Uneasy Dances, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa, FL
• Dances at a Cocktail Party, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa, FL
• Hallelujah/USA, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2003

• The Mad Dancers (play by Yehuda Hyman, co-directed and co-choreographed by Nick Olcott), Theatre J, Washington D.C.

2005

• Small Dances About Big Ideas, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts

2006

• Man/Chair Dances, Omaha Symphony Orchestra, Holland Performing Arts Center, Omaha, NE
• Ferocious Beauty: Genome, Wesleyan University, Middleton, CT

2007

• 613 Radical Acts of Prayer (collaboration with Cassie Meador), New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ

2009

• Darwin's Wife, Center for Education and Culture, Sapporo, Japan

2010

• The Matter of Origins, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2012

• Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2014

• Healing Wars, Arena Stage, Washington D.C.

Publications

• Teaching Dance to Senior Adults, 1984
• Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process: A method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert (co-author with John Borstel), 2003
• Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer, Wesleyan Press, 2011

References

External links

• Official website
• Dance Exchange website
• Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Archives - Special Collections in Performing Arts, University of Maryland
• "Toward a Process for Critical Response", Community Arts Network
• "Assessing the future of modern dance, a fragile American art form", Washington Post, Sarah Kaufman, April 4, 2010
• Archive film of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange performing Hallelujah: In Praise of Fertile Fields in 2000 at Jacob's Pillow