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About Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is a professional company of dance artists that creates, performs, teaches, and engages people in making art. Since its start in 1976, and in each encounter, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange asks four questions: Who gets to dance? Where is the dance happening? What is it about? Why does it matter? Liz Lerman Dance Exchange answers these questions with a range of interrelated activities: • Groundbreaking new dance works performed by a cross-generational company on major stages internationally, throughout the U.S., and at home in the communities of Maryland, Washington DC, and the Mid-Atlantic region. • Classes, workshop, and institutes for people who dance to make a living, people who dance to make a better life, and people who have never danced before. • Local and national projects that engage individuals, institutions and communities in making and performing dances. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange pursues a broad definition of dance as a multi-disciplinary art form that encompasses movement, music, imagery, and the spoken word. Throughout its programs, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange builds an accessible body of knowledge and makes meaningful connections between people and art. The Dance Exchange would like to hear from you. To find out more, please contact us.
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange History Since its founding in September 1976, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange has produced more than 100 innovative dance/theatre works, presented thousands of performances and conducted innumerable community encounters. With these activities, the company has reached communities of every size from Los Angeles, California to Eastport, Maine, from Yamaguchi, Japan to Gdansk, Poland. Highlights of our history: 1975 Liz Lerman begins teaching senior adults at the Roosevelt for Senior Citizens, a city-run residential facility in inner-city Washington, DC. She then creates Woman of the Clear Vision, a dance about her mother’s death with a cast of professional dancers and Roosevelt residents. 1976 The Dance Exchange is incorporated, opening a school for professional and avocational dancers in downtown DC. 1977 Ms Galaxy and Her Three Raps With God premieres at Baltimore Theater Project, the first in a career-long series of evening-length works that will typify Liz’s use of dance to address topics of cultural, social, and historical importance. 1978 New studios open on Rhode Island Avenue. Bonsai choreographed for the National Arboretum, the first in a long line of unusual commissioning partners. 1979 Who’s On First?, Liz’s dance about baseball, premieres at Washington Performing Arts Society’s City Dance Festival. 1980 Dance Exchange moves to new studios in the Lansburgh Building, a former department store that had gone into decline following the 1968 riots. As artistic director for the year’s City Dance festival, Liz choreographs 800 dancers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The Dance Exchange establishes the Dancers of the Third Age as adjunct troupe of senior adult dancers. The group will go on to offer hundreds of performances in Washington-area schools and to share the bill with the core company in many major engagements. 1981 Docudance: Reaganomics premieres at Dance Place and receives coverage from the Wall Street Journal, NPR’s All Things Considered and other national media. 1983 Liz Lerman’s Teaching Dance to Senior Adults is published. 1984 Touring increases; Project to revitalize Lansburgh falters; Dance Exchange closes its school. Company debuts in New York with Docudance: Nine Short Dances About the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters. 1985 Dance Exchange with Dancers of the Third Age make their first appearance abroad at The Other America Festival in Stockholm, Sweden. 1986 Performed on an outdoor stage at the foot of Manhattan, Still Crossing helps commemorate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty, establishing a signature work for the company that will engage dozens of communities over the next 20 years. Gala at French Embassy marks the company’s 10th Anniversary. Russia: Footnotes to a History continues Liz’s exploration into major topics with full-evening works. 1987 Dance Exchange dances at the Eurokaz Festival in Yugoslavia. 1990 May I Have Your Attention, Please? at DC’s Union Station helps establish Dance Exchange as an innovator in site-specific dance. 1991 The Good Jew? premieres, the result of two years of development and a national partnership between four performing arts presenters. 1993 Dance Exchange and Dancers of the Third Age are combined into a single, intergenerational performing troupe. Company is officially renamed Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. 1994 Safe House: Still Looking, inspired by the legacy of the Underground Railroad, premieres at the historic Friends Meeting House in Wilmington, Delaware, itself once a way-station for escaping slaves. 1995 Dance Exchange comes home for an unprecedented two week run at Washington’s new Lansburgh Theatre – in the building that ultimately took the place of the failed arts center. 1996 Two-year Shipyard Project, a collaboration with the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, culminates with a week long festival. The project will attract wide notice as an example of the power of the arts to promote such values as social capital and civic dialogue. 20th Anniversary celebrated with Light Years, a site-specific gala at DC’s dramatic Intelsat building. 1997 Dance Exchange moves artistic and administrative operations to a former post office on Maple Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland, a progressive small town on the DC border. Shehechianu, a three-year project examining the intersections in 20th Century American history, culminates at a second Lansburgh Theater run. 1998 New Dance Exchange school opens at company’s Maple Avenue studios. 2000 On New Year’s Day, Dance Exchange greets the new millennium and launches its 3-year, 15-city Hallelujah project with a sunrise performance in Eastport, Maine, the eastern-most city in the United States. 2001 At the peak of its tour, Hallelujah creates five new dances in the course of five months in five cities from Los Angeles, California to Burlington, Vermont. 2002 Hallelujah/USA caps off the Hallelujah project with a national gathering of project participants for four performances at the new Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts at Maryland. Over 100 performers from 15 cities gather to offer two full programs of dance and celebration engendered by this signal project. Liz Lerman awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. 2003 Peter DiMuro’s Near/Far/In/Out establishes Dance Exchange’s multiple artistic voices in performances on the road and at home. 2005 Small Dances About Big Ideas commissioned by Harvard Law School to commemorate 60th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. 2006 Ferocious Beauty: Genome premieres at Wesleyan University after two years in development and hundreds of interviews with scientists, ethicists, and scholars. Renovation of Takoma Park Studios replaces pillars with a steel roof support, opening up expansive new spaces for rehearsal and education. Re-opening helps to launch 30th Anniversary celebrations. Dance Exchange Is the New 30 celebration at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at Maryland marks the company’s 30th Anniversary with performances, party, and transfer of archives to the Center’s Performing Arts Library.
(For email addresses, please visit our Contact page.) StaffLiz Lerman, Founding Artistic Director John Borstel, Humanities Director Lee Woodman, External Relations Director Nicole Salimbene, Assistant to the Directors Bob Fogelgren, Artist Representative The CompanyPeter DiMuro Adjunct ArtistsElver Ariza Sandra Atkinson Meghan Bowden Asanga Domask Marina Kerlow Diane Lazarus Sarah Levitt Gesel Mason Tamara Pullman Suzanne Richard Margaret Schaefer Ashley Searles Samantha Speis
Elliot Rosen, Chair, BayFirst Solutions, LLC Ellen Coren Bogage, EB&A LLC Larry Coppard, Community Foundation for SE Michigan Cynthia J. Hallberlin, US Foodservice Martha S. Head, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Barbara Henry, Discovery Communications, LLC Christopher Magee, MD, Washington Adventist Hospital Steven Newsome, Prince George's African-American Museum and Cultural Center at North Brentwood ADVISORS Darren Bowie, Nokia Anne Maher, Kleinfeld Kaplan & Becker Susan Mann, Microsoft Corporation Lucille Pavco, National Public Radio Laura Smyth, National Arts Strategies |
© 2007 Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. Content and images may not be reproduced without
prior written consent. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is a 501(c)3 organization.