Episode 63: A Conversation with Liz Lerman

Liz Lerman

In chapter one of our conversation with Liz Lerman we'll talk about her early years, her career as a heretic, the critical response process, the Heisenberg Uncertainty, the power of the horizontal, and how dance can make the world a better place. 

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, teacher, and speaker. 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 everyone from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and experiences that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others.

Called by the Washington Post “the source of an epochal revolution in the scope and purposes of dance art,”[4] she and her dancers have collaborated with shipbuilders, physicists, construction workers, and cancer researchers.[5] In 2002 she won the MacArthur Genius Grant;[6] in 2009, the Jack P. Blaney Award in Dialogue acknowledged her outstanding leadership, creativity, and dedication to melding dialogue with dance;[citation needed] and the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.[7]

She 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;[8] the company is now called simply Dance Exchange.[9] .[10]

Under Lerman's leadership Dance Exchange appeared across the U.S. in locations as various as the National Cathedral,[11] Kennedy Center Opera House,[12] and Millennium Stage,[13] Lansburgh Theatre,[14] Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center,[14][15] 

Liz Lerman

In chapter one of our conversation with Liz Lerman we'll talk about her early years, her career as a heretic, the critical response process, the Heisenberg Uncertainty, the power of the horizontal, and how dance can make the world a better place. 

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, teacher, and speaker. 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 everyone from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and experiences that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others.

Called by the Washington Post “the source of an epochal revolution in the scope and purposes of dance art,”[4] she and her dancers have collaborated with shipbuilders, physicists, construction workers, and cancer researchers.[5] In 2002 she won the MacArthur Genius Grant;[6] in 2009, the Jack P. Blaney Award in Dialogue acknowledged her outstanding leadership, creativity, and dedication to melding dialogue with dance;[citation needed] and the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award.[7]

She 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;[8] the company is now called simply Dance Exchange.[9] .[10]

Under Lerman's leadership Dance Exchange appeared across the U.S. in locations as various as the National Cathedral,[11] Kennedy Center Opera House,[12] and Millennium Stage,[13] Lansburgh Theatre,[14] Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center,[14][15] Harvard University,[16] and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.[17][18]

Lerman's early work was strongly associated with the inclusion of older people alongside more traditional young performers,[19] and with the use of personal narrative.[4] Her later-career work has focused on questions of

Dance Exchange: (Previously, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) Fueled by generosity and curiosity, Dance Exchange expands who gets to dance, where dance happens, what dance is about, and why dance matters. Dance Exchange harnesses the power of creativity and inquiry through dance to connect communities, to deepen our understanding of ourselves and to foster a more embodied, resilient and just world.

 Critical Response Process: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process is a method for giving and getting feedback on work in progress, designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work. is Creative

Pee-Posh (Maricopa): The Maricopa people were small bands living along the lower Gila and Colorado rivers. Each of these bands migrated eastward at different times. The Xalychidom (Maricopa of Lehi), left around 1825-1830. The last of these bands is said to have left the Colorado River in the late 1830’s. Eventually these bands came together and became collectively known as the Maricopa. As they migrated eastward, they came upon the Pima tribe and established a relationship. Both tribes provided protection against the Yuman and Apache tribes.

 Tohono O’odham: The Tohono O’odham Nation is comparable in size to the state of Connecticut. Its four non-contiguous segments total more than 2.8 million acres at an elevation of 2,674 feet. Within its land the Nation has established an Industrial Park that is located near Tucson. Tenants of the Industrial Park include Caterpillar, the maker of heavy equipment; the Desert Diamond Casino, an enterprise of the Nation; and, an 23 acre foreign trade zone. of Wisconsin with a sociologist named Pearlman.

Freedom Schools: The Freedom Schools of the 1960s were part of a long line of efforts to liberate people from oppression using the tool of popular education, including secret schools in the 18th and 19th centuries for enslaved Africans; labor schools during the early 20th century; and the Citizenship Schools formed by Septima Clark and others in the 1950s.  

Anna Halprin: was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as a breaker of the rules of modern dance.[4] In the 1950s, she established the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop to give artists like her a place to practice their art. Exploring the capabilities of her own body, she created a systematic way of moving using kinesthetic awareness.[5 

Florence West, dance Milwaukee: Modern dance in Milwaukee begins with Florence West (1912-1994). West left Milwaukee at seventeen to dance in a Broadway road show, quit when she discovered ballet during a tour stop in Detroit, and found her way into the corps of the Chicago Civic Opera ballet. A Milwaukee opera producer asked her to come home to add choreography to a local production of Carmen. She soon became the go-to dance person for Milwaukee dance, theater, and opera companies.

Amira de la Garza: After spending a year in Mexico as a Fulbright Scholar, her experiences with the everyday talk and life around her led her to develop methods to integrate the arts, spirituality, and personal reflection into the study of culture. She works with many border-related projects, and has had students from around the world travel with her to many places to learn the methods she teaches.Professor de la Garza reports her research using creative writing, poetry, fiction, and has often shared her research through staged performances. 

The California State Summer School for the Arts is a rigorous, preprofessional, month-long training program in the visual and performing arts, creative writing, animation and film for talented artists of high school age. CSSSA provides a supportive environment in which students hone acquired skills and explore new techniques and ideas for an intense and exciting learning experience.

Ethel Butler, one of Liz’s teachers: From 1933 through 1945, Ethel Butler was a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She went on to become a well-known teacher of the Graham Technique, counting among her students Paul Taylor and Dan Wagoner.

Sandy Spring Friends School: Sandy Spring Friends School is a progressive, coeducational, college preparatory Quaker school serving students from preschool through 12th grade. SSFS offers an optional 5- and 7- day boarding program in the Middle School and Upper School. 

Art in Other Places, William Cleveland, Artists have established a remarkable record of innovation and success in institutional settings. Their work with hospital patients, prisoners, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, and others has shown that the arts can have a significant positive impact on the lives of these people. This book recounts the histories of 22 institutional and community arts programs across the country pioneering this approach through activities such as creative writing and the performing and visual arts.Rabbi, Danny Zemel.

Wicked Bodies: Inspired by powerful and grotesque images of women’s bodies over multiple historic periods, Liz Lerman’s Wicked Bodies, is an intimate spectacle, brings together several consistent themes of my choreographic output:

– the invisible ways and means of feminine thinking and action which have been celebrated, erased, or criminalized;

– legal systems that attempt but often fail to bend our actions towards a fairer and more just world; and

– how we as a group of intergenerational artists bring our personal lives to the stage within characters that are imagining futures

 Anand Giridharadas, The Persuaders is a stunning insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens who are on the ground working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy.

Anat Shanker Osorio: Host of the Words to Win By podcast and Principal of ASO Communications, Anat Shenker-Osorio examines why certain messages falter where others deliver. She has led research for new messaging on issues ranging from freedom to join together in union to clean energy and from immigrant rights to reforming criminal justice. Anat's original approach through priming experiments, task-based testing and online dial surveys has led to progressive electoral and policy victories across the globe.

Malonga Casquelourd: Even as a child in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, Casquelourd could hardly keep from moving, becoming a principal dancer with the National Congolese Dance Company in his teens and performing internationally before joining Le Ballet Diaboua in Paris. In 1972, he moved to New York and co-founded the United States' first Central African dance company, Tanawa. But his greatest impact was in the Bay Area. He arrived in Oakland in the mid-'70s, teaching Congolese dance and drumming at CitiCentre Dance Theater, where he was a founding instructor, and African studies at San Francisco State University. Even dancers who didn't take his classes looked forward to hearing his booming voice in the Alice Arts Center halls every Saturday. When the center faced closure in 2002, Casquelourd led the campaign to keep it open to the public.

Cristobal Martinez: Cristóbal Martínez, PhD is from Alcalde, New Mexico and is of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito and Chicano people in Northern New Mexico including Española, Abiquiu, Velarde, Pó t'síí pangeh, Embudo and Dixon. He is an artist, digital designer, publishing scholar, and Professor of Expanded Arts at Arizona State University. Martínez co-founded the artist-hacker ensemble Radio Healer in 2003; joined the internationally acclaimed artist collective Postcommodity in 2009; and co-created, with post-Mexican artist-composer Guillermo Galindo, the experimental electronic music ensemble Red Culebra in 2018. Martínez has dedicated his life and career to interdisciplinary collaboration in contemporary art, and continues his work within these groups.