My Rabbi Danny Zemel often says “if it is not broken, break it.”

There are two things people have said about me that I actually like:
1. Question everything. Liz Lerman does.
2. Liz Lerman can talk a hound dog off a truck load of meat bones.

Both of these ideas required me to behave outside the boundaries of the dance training I received in my earliest and most formative years. The beauty and disgrace of orthodoxy is that it isn’t questioned. You learn your place and you stay in line. You just do it as best as you can, or better yet, better than anyone else in line. When I first started to wonder about another way to do things, I literally shook with fear. When I first opened my mouth to speak in a dance class, I cried first. (To be perfectly honest, it was a theater class and we were required to speak. I cried anyway.)

My colleague and college friend, Wendy Perron, told me recently that she remembers me complaining constantly, and more than anyone else. It took me a long time to learn how to turn my complaints into questions. It narrows down to asking “why?” “Why is it done like this? Why is that better? Why am I supposed to do this? Why …?”

Once I started asking why, it was a lot easier to move from New York to Washington, to drop out of college, to go back and finish, to get old people to dance, to start talking on stage, to get people to say their names before an advanced technique class, to insist that dancers in the company – not me – teach the master classes, to do dances with political or spiritual content, to share in making something, to speak in public about art, to do a founder’s transition without leaving the company I had founded.

Although I’ve made a point of questioning orthodoxy, there’s plenty that I believe in. Here are a few ideas:
* Try to give dancers something to do, as opposed to something not to do.
* Try to create an environment of respect for all the collaborators, including the dancers.
* Sometimes the choreographer leads the dancers, sometimes the dancers lead the choreographer. Pay attention.
* There is a finite amount of emotional space in a theater. If the performers take up too much of it, there is not enough left for the audience. Choreograph accordingly. Check in with the performers to make sure they understand. Sometimes they need extra rehearsal for the emotional part so that they can discover how to let it go later.
* Performers need the most time to experience something. Choreographers need a little less. The audience needs a lot less. So edit.
* The problem isn’t being literal. The problem is being redundant. It is okay to be communicative and even expressive. Maybe we want to watch being illustrative or overstating. Be wary. The program notes, text, music, movement can all say the same thing (a problem) or all say something unique leading in a similar direction. Just to confuse matters, sometimes it is good to be redundant to make a point or to bring an audience to its experience of literacy for the night.
* Keep track of everything that is generated. It might come in handy.
* It is okay to talk about stuff outside of rehearsal. It won’t jinx the project.
* Sometimes the dancers know what is best to do next. They know it first. But sometimes they are wrong.
* I like to think of structure as a constant companion. It is always on my mind way before we go into rehearsal. Generally, it is still there by the time we are in tech rehearsals. Structure might reside in the content. Structure might need to be imposed. Structure is the choreographer’s business, domain, and personal playground.
* I like to discover new processes for each dance. I can fall back on old faithfuls — things I know will work. But I love it when I find something new to try.
* When people complain that something is “touchy-feely,” I always want to say: “ Well, yes, of course it is about touching and feeling.” I think when they say that, they are actually worried about rigor or the lack of it. If that is the case, be sure to be rigorous and be sure they know it is.

What is on your mind these days?
I’m thinking deeply about equity and justice and what my role is in bending the world in that direction. In all of my conversations, I bring forward my Jewish spiritual life. I try to speak from experience, not authority; then beautiful things can happen.
I believe that in Judaism we form new relationships with the past, if we are lucky. So much of what we are fighting over in the streets is our histories and how they impact the present; the retelling of our Jewish stories along with fresh commentary is a way of dealing with the implications of the past.
Can dance be a healing process?
Absolutely. Engaging our full selves includes our bodies. Just moving and being part of a group in song, or just bringing our arms up together is beautiful. People feel so much more connected. I’ve put my whole life into this, and it surprises me that it’s still unusual.
People are more fully themselves when engaging in healing or in being in relationship with others. The questions are not just their own. Those acts help heal the inner soul too.
I understand that shechayanu is your favorite prayer.
I first started to bring shechayanu into multi-cultural and multi-religious settings — which are most of the settings I’m in — in the 1990s, talking about how identity and different cultural forms play out on stage. I would introduce myself with the shechayanu and first translated it as we learned it, thanking God for granting us life, sustaining us and giving us structure, and helping us reach this day. Then I would retranslate it for artists: Isn’t it amazing that given our histories, that we should be here at this moment, right now, together?
What kind of work are you doing with synagogues?
This year, I will work with Temple Micah in the afternoon of Yom Kippur. The place is usually packed then and everyone knows that’s the time when we’ll use our bodies. This year we’ll try it virtually, with everyone in their homes. Preparation begins in Elul, when Rabbi Daniel Zemel puts forth a question and people send their personal stories back. The rabbi also selects a few congregants to help me make the dance. It is really an eclectic group of all ages. We look through the stories and turn them into a dance that will be taught and then set to a prayer that the cantor selects. Again the dance and the moving holds multiple purposes, bringing us together, hearing the stories in a new way, and helping us get through the long day that is Yom Kippur.
How does this moment in America relate to your preparation for the High Holidays?
I want to talk about Ibram Kendi’s book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” I heard him say that you’re either in denial or confession, as white people. I found this useful. When I am in conversation with friends and these issues come up, rather than going into denial, it’s better according to my understanding of Kendi to jump to the other side. Do I need to confess? What I have found powerful is that this forces an deeper reflection on what we mean by apology. A lifetime of Yom Kippur has given us rehearsal. When we spend weeks preparing and thinking about our year and our actions, about ourselves and our community. As Jews, we have this very compelling practice of atonement. You don’t get off easy. That’s what Kendi has come to mean for me. Confession, as I have come to understand it as a Jewish concept, is bigger and deeper and more demanding than mere apology .
Where is God in all of this?
I think God is an example of our extreme creativity. Trying to make space for people to recall their innate creative selves is Godlike for me. I am amazed and startled by people’s capacity to do this. My rabbi once said that God is most Godlike when creating. We are created in God’s image and we are most Godlike when we are creating. That is a sustaining thought.