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.
Artist Liz Lerman is consumed by 3 ideas…
The Whole World is in Motion
Wouldn’t you think the knowledge that choreographers and dance artists hold would be of greater value? We have a deep understanding and the curiosity and drive to closely investigate ideas of proximity, weight, geometry, touch… This whole world is in motion, and we have the training, the creativity, and the reflexive instincts to relate to that in a meaningful way.
You Start Judging and Being Judged in the Womb
Yet, how often do we talk about the way we give each other feedback? Liz Lerman developed Critical Response Process® (CRP) to approach giving and getting feedback with greater intention. The framework, now used across the globe by practitioners in the arts, academia, and business, is designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work.
The Body as Radical Canvas
Currently In-Process
My Body is a Library™
We live in perilous times. My Body is a Library™, a new choreographic work by Liz Lerman & Paloma McGregor, affords audiences the opportunity to reflect, discuss, listen, watch, think, and dwell within difficult subjects. The work is a multi-disciplinary project that animates spaces within libraries through site-specific participatory performances, immersive installations, and embodied research processes. What shapes the narrative is the responses of librarians who are asked, What knowledge do we as a society choose to celebrate, erase, and even criminalize?
Legacy Unboxed™
Liz Lerman, Joanna Haigood, Eiko Otake, Merián Soto, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar are exploring how we might reimagine the ways artists share their life’s work with the world. How can these five pioneering choreographers make their artistic knowledge, methods, and philosophies available and accessible to future generations in ways that honor the embodied, experiential nature of dance while resisting erasure and fostering continued evolution of their work?
WORLD IN MOTION JUDGING AND BEING JUDGED BODY AS RADICAL CANVAS WORLD IN MOTION JUDGING AND BEING JUDGED BODY AS RADICAL CANVAS WORLD IN MOTION JUDGING AND BEING JUDGED BODY AS RADICAL CANVAS WORLD IN MOTION JUDGING AND BEING JUDGED BODY AS RADICAL CANVAS WORLD IN MOTION JUDGING AND BEING JUDGED BODY AS RADICAL CANVAS
Insomniac Alerts from Liz Lerman
Art, action, activism
Once, years ago, I was on a panel with my fellow choreographer Bella Lewitzky, one of the great exponents of modern dance on the West Coast. We got to talking about our...
I am a trader
I am a trader, moving ideas through the body In between people Communities Institutions Trade means – Learning languages Negotiating thoughts Forms and structures Stories...
Finding dance in the Library of Congress
Surprise! There is no subject heading for dance in the classification system of the Library of Congress. Dance books are there for sure. (Mine are somewhere!) But the...
Liz Lerman’s forthcoming book, Shape and Momentum: An Insomniac’s Guide for a World in Constant Motion, is a choreographic manifesto for living in motion—part memoir, part creative toolkit, part philosophical inquiry.
Sign Up
It is our intention to be generous in sharing our world with you. You can expect to hear about works in progress, Liz’s thoughts on teaching and creating new courses, news of awards and achievements, and more regular writing from Liz about dance, responding to art, and more. We welcome your reflections and support.
We will never ever ever sell or share your name.
video credits: Tim Trumble, Andrea Patiño Contreras, John Kinhart, Anna Clare Spelman, Taylor Verrett; photo credits: Lise Metzger, Adam Fontana, Amelia Cox
