Blaney Award recognizes US choreographer Liz Lerman

Celebrated US-based choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker Liz Lerman is this year’s winner of Simon Fraser University’s Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue.

The award recognizes an individual who exemplifies internationally the spirit and programs of SFU’s Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue.

"Liz Lerman has spent a lifetime building bridges between diverse communities, using dialogue as a tool in dance and cross-disciplinary arts projects,” says Mark Winston, academic director of the Centre for Dialogue.

"She reaches out to those who may not normally have a voice, and she inspires others with her vision, her passion and her desire to raise awareness on pressing social and environmental issues.”

Lerman will accept the award at an invitation-only event on Oct. 19 in Vancouver. As a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Dialogue from Oct. 13-22, she will participate in a number of workshops, dialogues and public performance.

Her activities are co-sponsored by BC’s LINK Dance Foundation, the International Centre of Art for Social Change and SFU Contemporary Arts.

About LINK Dance Foundation:  

Yukon-born and Vancouver-based, LINK Dance explores the connection between social movement and physical motion. LINK is working with the Centre to create Experiments, a dance performance that connects the creativity of science with the rigor of dance. Lerman will serve as an artistic consultant to the production, which will be featured as part of the SFU Contemporary Arts at Woodward’s inaugural cultural program in 2010.

About the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC):

Founded by Judith Marcuse, an internationally recognized leader in the field of art in community work, ICASC is a global communications, research and learning hub, designed to nurture and support this diverse and growing field.