Liz Lerman

Liz Lerman (born 1947 in Los Angeles, CA) is an American choreographer and founder of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange .

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

Early life

Liz Lerman was born in Los Angeles, California on Christmas Day, 1947. Her father Philip was an organizer and activist, and her mother was an artist. Though her family moved several times when she was growing up, much of her early education was spent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she was 14 years old, she danced in Washington, DC, for President Kennedy as part of a group from the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. She attended Bennington College, where she studied under Martha Wittman, who would later become a company member of Dance Exchange. She graduated received her B.A. in dance from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in dance from George Washington University.

Career

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; the company is now called simply Dance Exchange.
.

Under Lerman's leadership Dance Exchange appeared across the U.S. in locations as various as the National Cathedral, Kennedy Center Opera House, and Millennium Stage, Lansburgh Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Harvard University