A Conversation with Liz Lerman, Part Two
From: National Endowment for the Arts
Series: Art Works Podcast
Length: 25:11
This is the second of a two-part interview with one of the great innovators of contemporary dance, Liz Lerman. For Lerman, dance is a way to think and anyone can dance. The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is a multi-generational company of dancers whose ages span six decades. She is known for breaking down boundaries between stage and audience, and theater and community often by creating site-specific work in places like the Portsmouth shipyard in New Hampshire. In fact, Liz lerman believes that The Shipyard Project of the late 1990sis probably one of the projects that really opened up the world for her, but it opened up the world to her ideas. The purpose of the Shipyard Project was to explore the significance of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to the lives of people in Portsmouth. It is the country’s oldest naval base and had been downsized and at that time was slated to close.
Throughout the two-year residency, current and retired shipyard workers, and local citizens told their stories to Lerman and her dancers. Tihs became the raw material from which Liz developed a commissioned dance piece. The project culminated in a three weeks of dance events performed by the Liz Lerman dancers and community members. They performed on boats and on bridges, and in the shipyard.
The response from people in the community responded to The Shipyard Project was enormous. They were moved to see their own stories, their working lives, enacted by the dancers.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
This is the second of a two-part interview with one of the great innovators of contemporary dance, Liz Lerman. For Lerman, dance is a way to think and anyone can dance. The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is a multi-generational company of dancers whose ages span six decades. She is known for breaking down boundaries between stage and audience, and theater and community often by creating site-specific work in places like the Portsmouth shipyard in New Hampshire. In fact, Liz lerman believes that The Shipyard Project of the late 1990sis probably one of the projects that really opened up the world for her, but it opened up the world to her ideas. The purpose of the Shipyard Project was to explore the significance of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to the lives of people in Portsmouth. It is the country’s oldest naval base and had been downsized and at that time was slated to close.
Throughout the two-year residency, current and retired shipyard workers, and local citizens told their stories to Lerman and her dancers. Tihs became the raw material from which Liz developed a commissioned dance piece. The project culminated in a three weeks of dance events performed by the Liz Lerman dancers and community members. They performed on boats and on bridges, and in the shipyard.
The response from people in the community responded to The Shipyard Project was enormous. They were moved to see their own stories, their working lives, enacted by the dancers.
Transcript
Transcript of conversation with Liz Lerman, part 2
Liz Lerman: When you spend time with people trying to see if art can make a difference in their life, it's interesting to hear all the reasons why it can and why it can't. And acceptance isn't the only way to make it work. Whether we're accepted or not isn't always the case, because we're not always accepted in the theater, and we're not always accepted by a critic, and we're not always accepted my own peers— hardly always accept what I'm doing. But I think giving people an opportunity to experience it on some level and see, "What does this say to me? What does this mean to me?” That’s pretty great.
Jo Reed: That was choreographer, performer, author and Macarthur genius grant recipient, liz lerman. Welcome to Art Works, the program that goes behind the scenes with some of the nation’s great artists to explore how art works. I’m y...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreric: Piano Study | Todd Barton | Metascapes. | Valley Productions | 00:00 |
Additional Credits
Excerpts from"Fugue" and "Scientist as Choreographer" are from Liz Lerman’s project: "Ferocious Beauty: Genome." Both are compilations by sound designer Darron L. West.
“Dark Matter” is from Liz Lerman’s project, The Matter of Origins. All are used courtesy of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
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