1970s Although Lerman dabbled in choreography in high school and college, she considers her choreographic career to begin with the solo piece called
New York City Winter (1974) about her nine months living in the
East Village and working as a go-go dancer to fund her technique classes. When her mother died from cancer in 1975, Lerman entered an emotional period of loss and reflection. She wanted to harness her family's experience into a dance so she sought out the presence of older dancers needed to fulfill the dream imagery she had lived with while her mother was dying. Lerman's search led her to the Roosevelt Hotel for Senior Citizens where she taught a unique technique class based on how she understood dance at the time. The class met once a week and between 30 and 80 residents would attend. Inspired and necessitated by her mother's death, Lerman choreographed
Women of the Clear Vision (1975), her first piece that included older dancers. The piece honored her mother's life and death, where Lerman performed as both mother and daughter. As Lerman continued her work at the Roosevelt Hotel for Senior Citizens and teaching at George Washington University, she learned that her potential to apply for resources to support her work would be greater if she led an organization. In 1976, Lerman founded the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange where she embraced cross-generational, cross-racial, and cross-class work.
1980s While leading the Dance Exchange, Lerman pursued making dances that explored critical social topics such as
Docudance: Reaganomics (No One Knows What the Numbers Mean) (1982) and
Docudance: Nine Short Dances About the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters (1983) which quickly gained media recognition. She began to weave together personal narratives, historical facts, and data-driven information into her choreographic storytelling. In 1986, Lerman was commissioned by Dancing in the Streets to commemorate the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration, which became the iconic piece
Still Crossing (1986). Lerman continued to choreograph timely pieces such as
Pavane for Two Older Women (1983),
E.Hopper (1984),
Russia: Footnotes to a History (1986), and
Atomic Priests (1987). The Dance Exchange emerged as a model company that could balance touring concert and community-based work, and maintain an environment at home for workshops and special classes.
1990s Well into her choreographic career with the Dance Exchange in the early 1990s, Lerman decided to channel her frustration with the careless habits surrounding criticism into a new feedback ritual. Lerman experimented with systems of peer response grounded in inquiry, honesty, supportive critique, and addressing the problems of hierarchy. After testing in various settings such as the
American Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, and Alternate ROOTS, Lerman articulated the now renowned formal system of The Critical Response Process. Notable dance pieces from Lerman's career in the 90s included
The Good Jew? (1991) where Lerman put herself on trial to question whether she was Jewish enough.
Safe House: Still Looking (1994) was made in response to requests from the city residents of
Wilmington, Delaware to recognize their history in the
underground railroad. The piece also made it possible for the community to extend questions of race and culture into the present day.
Shehechianu: Faith and Science on the Midway (1995),
Shehechianu: Bench Marks (1996), and
Shehechianu: Skin Soliloquies (1997) were inspired by the question of how histories affect the present and used the Jewish prayer
Shehecheyanu as a balm. Lerman loosely translates the prayer as "Isn't it amazing that, given all our different histories, we're gathered together in this moment?" The three pieces drew from the company members' personal experiences to illustrate the joys and challenges of coexisting and questioned how to move forward with respect for the past. ''The Music Hall's Shipyard Project
(1996) culminated an eighteen month residency with the community to process the downsizing and efforts to close the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Lerman and the company collaborated with shipyard workers, civilian and military personnel, youth, and retired shipyard professionals to develop pieces that interpreted their experiences with the shipyard. The project culminated in a one week festival where the company and residents performed twice a day, once on the shipyard ground and once somewhere in the community. Lerman interviewed her father, just before his death in 1999, and his voice and stories are interspersed throughout the piece. White Gloves/Hard Hats
(1998) and Pas de Dirt
(1998) premiered the iconic duet between bulldozers and ballerinas. Lerman finished off her career in the 90s with early explorations of what would become The Hallelujah Project''.
2000s From 1998 until 2002 for
The Hallelujah Project, Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange traveled across fifteen cities and worked with over 1000 community members in search of the daily moments of praise and celebration. Fifteen unique projects were created ranging from
In Praise of Ordinary Prophets (2000) in Arizona to
In Praise of Paradise Lost and Found (2001) in Michigan. In 2002, Lerman was awarded the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius" Grant showcasing the power of dance to harness lived experience as a means of connection across generations and communities. With the support of her long-time collaborator, John Borstel, Lerman published ''Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process: A Method for Getting Useful Feedback on Anything You Make, from Dance to Dessert'' (2003). The step-by-step guide formally introduced the Critical Response Process as a method for giving and getting feedback on creative work in progress, designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work.
Martha Minow, the dean of the Harvard Law School at the time, was pivotal to the research and encouraged a portion of the performance to be interactive with the audience. Audience's stories and movement were incorporated in the memorable final scene where performers petitioned the judge using current events from that day in the
International Criminal Court. Dedicated to using dance for public understanding of complex topics, Lerman developed
Ferocious Beauty: Genome (2006) in collaboration with scientists from institutions such as the
National Institutes of Health, Howard University, and Wesleyan University, where the piece premiered. Lerman artistically showcased the awe and rigor of genetic research and provided audiences with fundamental knowledge around developmental biology. Following a stage performance that constituted Act One, audiences moved to a nearby venue for an Act Two "Tea," which served up cake and conversation, as dance was performed among the tables and on newly minted iPads. Throughout the research process, Lerman repeatedly took a team to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (
CERN), where dancers were filmed in the
Hadron Collider just before the system was activated. The
National Science Foundation funded a small project which allowed the performance company to carry out research with audiences as the piece progressed. After thirty five years as the Founding Artistic Director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Lerman stepped down from leading the non-profit dance company. The successful transition was carried out over several years making it possible for the organization to continue under new leadership while Lerman entered a new era working as an independent artist. Lerman gathered the wisdom gained from her unorthodox choreographic experiences up to that point into a collection of essays titled
Hiking the Horizontal (2011) published by Wesleyan University Press. Using dance as a vehicle for human insight and understanding of the world, Lerman offered the book as a gentle manifesto to bring a horizontal focus to bear on a hierarchical world.
Blood, Muscle, Bone (2013), a collaboration with
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and
Urban Bush Women, was Lerman's first post-Dance Exchange piece. Public sharings of
Blood, Muscle, Bone included stage performances, prayer breakfasts, workshops, panels, and cabarets that critically questioned how wealth and poverty are defined, imagined, and impact the body. Lerman went on to choreograph
Healing Wars (2014), a multimedia performance utilizing the
American Civil War to reflect on conflicts to the present day.
Healing Wars featured an ensemble of dancers including a Navy veteran with a prosthetic leg and actors such as award-winning
Bill Pullman.
Healing Wars toured in through the good auspices of university dance presenters and in two major regional theatres, Arena Stage and
La Jolla Playhouse, where the piece had a one month run, 7 performances a week, which is unusual in the Dance field. A highlight of
Healing Wars was the live gallery installation prologue, in which each performer moved about their uniquely set room, complete with objects and natural materials, such as trees and dirt. The audience wandered through these backstage rooms before they took their formal seats. One way Lerman thought about this experience was as an "animated program note", a window into each character's lives, physical conditions, and environments. In 2016, Lerman accepted her first full-time faculty position at
Arizona State University's
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and was named the first of the Institute Professors. The community at Arizona State University (ASU) was thrilled to welcome Lerman to support their investigation of an artist's role in society, preparation of artists as partners in innovation, and supporting Lerman's quest to create a digital space for creative tools. In 2017, Lerman was honored with both the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award and the American Dance Festival's Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching Award.
2020s Lerman committed to creating a piece about witches after visiting an art exhibition in 2013 at the
Scottish National Gallery entitled
Witches and Wicked Bodies, which covered 500 years of drawings of witches by Western illustrators. Throughout the pandemic, Lerman and her team used virtual platforms to continue creatively working the piece. After a decade of research and development, Lerman premiered
Wicked Bodies (2022) which showcased invisible ways feminine and embodied knowing have been celebrated, erased, and criminalized.
Wicked Bodies was presented by
Sonoma State University, ASU Gammage, Jacob's Pillow, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. With the Critical Response Process (CRP) being utilized by diverse practitioners across the world for nearly three decades, Lerman and co-author John Borstel published
Critique is Creative (2022). In the book, Lerman and Borstel deepened the understanding and practicality of the process. Additionally, 21 CRP practitioners contributed essays on the applications and variations of CRP in diverse fields such as education, congregations, and community life. Following a three-year senior fellowship at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, Liz Lerman and Brett Cook shared the interactive exhibition
Reflection & Action which was open to the public from October 2022 to April 2023. In 2023, Lerman was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Lerman has often quipped that she wrote her autobiography by filling out the personal narrative portion of the Guggenheim application twenty seven times. The grant came at an opportune time to afford Lerman a sabbatical, which closed with a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, where she worked on her new book. Lerman was also honored with the 2024 Dance Magazine award where she reflected on the critical role of the body for our species' survival. Lerman's current projects include building the
Atlas of Creative Tools, an online resource and archive, and Legacy Unboxed. Legacy Unboxed supports a collaboration with groundbreaking artists and extraordinary choreographers, Eiko Otake, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Joanna Haigood, and Merián Soto. Legacy Unboxed has several investigative avenues, including the preparation of each artist's archives, efforts to influence how embodied knowledge is categorized, and a series of site-specific research performance events called My Body is a Library. Lerman's upcoming book with a working title of ''A World in Constant Motion: An Insomniac's Guide through Shape and Momentum'' is a collection of personal essays set to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2026. and a fundamentals course. == The Atlas of Creative Tools ==