Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, and educator, and the recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools™, an online resource and archive, and Legacy Unboxed which includes site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. She founded and led the Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011. Liz is the author of several books, including a forthcoming collection of essays, and currently an Institute Professor at Arizona State University and Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, educator, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Liz founded and led the Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011, where she cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble. Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools™, an online resource and archive, and Legacy Unboxed that involves a series of site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. Lerman’s upcoming book is a collection of personal essays set to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025. Liz continues to evolve the Critical Response Process™ through the annual certification program and an upcoming fundamentals course.

Liz is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults (1984), Hiking the Horizontal (2014), and co-author of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (2003) and Critique Is Creative (2022) with John Borstel. She is currently an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, educator, and the recipient of numerous honors including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Beginning her choreographic career in 1974, she has spent the past five decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. Recently, Liz and her team of witches toured the dance theatre piece Wicked Bodies (2022) investigating the attempted erasure of embodied knowledge.

Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools™, an online resource and archive, and Legacy Unboxed that involves a series of site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. Lerman’s upcoming book, An Insomniac’s Guide to a World in Constant Motion, is a collection of personal essays set to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025. Liz continues to evolve the Critical Response Process™ through the annual certification program and a forthcoming fundamentals course.

Liz founded and led the Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011, where she cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. Lerman’s community-based practices have included residencies at Children’s National Hospital, Roosevelt Hotel for Senior Citizens, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Harvard ArtLab. Her work has been commissioned by numerous presenters, including Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, Harvard Law School, and Portsmouth Music Hall.

She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults (1984), Hiking the Horizontal (2014), and co-author of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (2003) and Critique is Creative (2022) with John Borstel. She is currently an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, educator, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2014 Dance/USA Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Beginning her choreographic career in 1974, she has spent the past five 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 librarians to physicists, rabbis to bharatanatyam dancers, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. Recently, Liz and her team of witches toured the dance theatre piece Wicked Bodies (2022) investigating the attempted erasure of embodied knowledge.

Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools™, an online resource and archive, and Legacy Unboxed that involves a series of site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. Lerman’s upcoming book, An Insomniac’s Guide to a World in Constant Motion, is a collection of personal essays set to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025. Liz continues to evolve the Critical Response Process™ through the annual certification program and a forthcoming fundamentals course.

Liz founded and led the Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011, where she cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance, including its residency at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Lerman’s community-based practices have included residencies at Children’s National Hospital, Roosevelt Hotel for Senior Citizens, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Harvard ArtLab. Her work has been commissioned by numerous presenters, including Arena Stage, The Kennedy Center, Harvard Law School, and Portsmouth Music Hall.

She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults (1984), Hiking the Horizontal (2014), and co-author of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (2003) and Critique is Creative (2022) with John Borstel. Liz’s retrospective titled Brett Cook & Liz Lerman: Reflection & Action was featured at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from October 2022 until June 2023. She is currently an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Milwaukee, Liz attended Bennington College and Brandeis University, received her BA in dance from the University of Maryland, and an MA in dance from George Washington University. She is married to storyteller Jon Spelman. Their daughter, Anna Clare Spelman, is a documentary photographer.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer and educator, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2014 Dance/USA Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. Beginning her choreographic career in 1974, Lerman has spent the past five decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. She founded and led Dance Exchange from 1976 until 2011, where she cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. 

Lerman has gained international recognition for her efforts to bridge the arts and sciences. The Matter of Origins (2010) addressed the physics and philosophy of beginnings and probed into the mind’s capacity to discover and comprehend the workings of matter at extremes of scale, from the quantum to the cosmic. Lerman received funding from the National Science Foundation to research Origins, which included a visit to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, to meet with nuclear physicists and rehearse in the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider. 

Ferocious Beauty: Genome (2006) offered audiences genetic research in an accessible, creative, and thoughtful way. Projected interviews with contemporary scientists integrated into the choreography shared the awe and rigor of genetic discovery through subject-specific vignettes. Lerman’s work with Genome continued in a multi-year collaboration with scientists at Wesleyan University to produce the Science Choreography website offering K-12 educators embodied learning tools for science lessons, such as the DNA helix and genetic testing. At Arizona State University (ASU), Lerman continues to nurture art-science collaborations through her “Animating Research” course where students partner with scientists to creatively communicate research findings culminating in site-specific performance installations throughout science buildings. She has also co-taught the course “Creative Tools for Saving Biodiversity” with Scientist Dr. Beckett Sterner, where students practiced creative tools in laboratory-style applications. Liz Lerman is currently an Institute Professor at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer and educator, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Award, and the 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award. She is currently an Institute Professor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. Liz’s active projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools™, an online resource, and Legacy Unboxed that involves a series of site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. 

Lerman has been a long-time member of Temple Micah in Washington, D.C. where she has collaborated with the congregation and its rabbis over the past several decades. She was a part of Synagogue 2000 where she introduced dance for congregational life to many in the United States. Over several years, she ran a program called Moving Jewish Communities that brought Jewish dance artists together for shared learning.

In 2024, Lerman contributed the essay “Creativity is Our Birthright” to the book Communities of Meaning: Conversations on Modern Jewish Life Inspired by Rabbi Larry Hoffman, edited by Joseph Skloot and Lisa Grushcow. She also has a chapter titled “Small Dances About Big Ideas: Moving Past the Limits of Dancing About Genocide” set to be published by IPbooks in Dr. Berman and Dr. Humphries’ upcoming book tentatively titled Stories of the Holocaust Onstage and In Concert: Art for Healing and Renewal.

Lerman continues to support Jewish communities through her creative engagements and embodied tools. Liz has also worked in other religious and spiritual settings to promote growth and understanding. In The Hallelujah Project, which consisted of fifteen different dances in fifteen different cities from 1998 to 2002, Lerman led communities in temporarily suspending differences to praise humanity’s shared creative beauty. She held space for interfaith discovery around what is praiseworthy by bringing together diverse individuals such as a Buddhist, a rabbi, a Christian minister, and an African American gospel choir. Lerman is the author of three books with a fourth due to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025, the inventor of the Critical Response Process™, and continues to make dance theater works for the stage and communities.