Elizabeth Lerman

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, writer, educator, and speaker, and the recipient of honors including a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” and a 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. Key to her artistry is opening her process to various publics, resulting in research and outcomes that are multi-disciplinary, participatory, urgent, and funny. Current projects include building the Atlas of Creative Tools, an online resource, her touring production of Wicked Bodies, and the retrospective at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts titled Reflection & Action. She founded Dance Exchange in 1976 and led it until 2011.

Liz is the author of several books including Teaching Dance to Senior Adults, Hiking the Horizontal, and most recently, co-authoring Critique is Creative with John Borstel, which addresses the Critical Response Process: a communication system for giving and receiving feedback that she invented decades ago. She is currently Institute Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. A former fellow of the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Liz is currently a senior fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University.