Liz Lerman—choreographer, author, educator, 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship recipient, and longtime Americans for the Arts Artists Committee member and Board member—will join the faculty of Arizona State University at the beginning of the spring semester.

 

Lerman will assume a unique position as Institute Professor to lead programs and courses that span disciplines within and beyond ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. She will create a cooperative of artists, researchers, and civic leaders in a lab-like environment to experiment with methods and techniques for broad social impact. Working across disciplinary lines and schools, her Ensemble Lab will examine the role of artists in society, expand artists’ professional opportunities, and prepare artists to be both imaginative innovators and civic partners.

 

As a young artist based in Washington, D.C., Lerman founded the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976. She cultivated its multigenerational ensemble into a leading influence in contemporary dance until 2011, when she began an independent phase of her career. Working with collaborators from fields as diverse as genomics, to religion, to physics, her work has won critical and scholarly attention and has included an examination of human-rights law commissioned for the Harvard Law School; a dance about origins launched in the tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and later performed at ASU Gammage; nine short performances about the defense budget; and innovative residencies and collaborations that span nursing homes and medical schools to the National Academy of Sciences and the London Dance Umbrella.

 

Lerman is widely recognized as an important influence in the worlds of dance, arts-based community engagement, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Americans for the Arts was pleased to have her participate in the 2015 Annual Convention in Chicago, where she, along with physicist Hideo Mabuchi, spoke about empowering the future through the arts (beginning at the 24:30 minute mark). 

 

Americans for the Arts wishes Lerman the best both professionally and personally as she assumes her new position at ASU. More information is available in ASU's announcement.