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Drawing the observer into the dance
Always relying on audience response, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange seeks to elicit and express the joyful and the sweetly human.
By MARINA BROWN
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 11, 2001
[Publicity photo]
“Without the dynamic of the audience, we couldn’t exist,” says Liz Lerman, creator of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
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Liz Lerman, creator of Dance Exchange, takes a unusual tack on the simple idea, the profound gesture, the goofy juxtapositions life throws our way.
And she relies not just on what she creates on stage, but what happens between the performers and the audience. Hence, the name of her troupe.
"Without the dynamic of the audience, we couldn't exist," says Lerman, 53, with a strong emphasis on "dynamic."
Lerman's ability to bring audiences with her is well established: In 1980 she led a group of 800 people in dancing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; in 1993, dancers and audience danced their way in and out of the bathrooms and lobby at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with the audience ending up on the stage.
And her 1996 Shipyard Project drew on the feelings and everyday movements of longshoremen whom Lerman had coaxed into participating in a performance on the docks of Portsmouth, N.H.
Lerman, whose 30-year-old company is finishing a three-week residency at the University of Michigan, says her passion for often-overlooked points of view comes naturally. Her grandfather fought for the creation of the state of Israel, her father was a socialist union organizer, and her mother was a gentle soul with "absolutely the highest artistic standards."
"My family took us to see everything -- highbrow, lowbrow, always with the idea that everyone had something to say, everybody was relevant."
When Lerman's mother went to live in a nursing home, the dancer created choreography for the other residents. That led to what has become one of her trademarks: mixing dancers of different ages to make profound statements about the body and spirituality. Currently, the oldest dancer in her company is Thomas Dwyer, 66, who didn't begin to dance until he was in his fifties.
Lerman will soon complete the last months of her three-year, multicity community interaction called the Hallelujah Project. "My desire was to ask communities, their dancers and everyday citizens to focus on what is joyful in their lives, what part of life can we celebrate as funny, triumphant, or just sweetly human." Though it is not a part of the Hallelujah Project, she and her company will return to Tampa in February for a three-week workshop to stage a commissioned work about Leonard Bernstein.
Given her previous works with such titles as Reaganomics, The Good Jew and Nine Short Dances About the Defense Budget and Other Military Matters, it's clear Lerman is fond of dealing with weighty issues. What is her reaction to the events of Sept. 11?
"I've often thought about violence and if I wanted to go there" in art, she says. "But an artist's job is to help people transform the experience."
To illustrate, she tells the ancient tale expressed in one of her Hallelujah pieces, about paradise lost, and found, and lost again. "If a person dances ecstatically enough, his shoe will fly off and into the Garden of Eden. There an angel will find all of the lost shoes and weave them into special crowns for the blessed," Lerman says.
"Now, I want to tell you another story," she continues. "It is a beautiful autumn morning, the sky is blue, when along comes a plane and it flies into a building . . ." She stops.
"Now the artist must take over. He must find the tools to turn these images into something transcendent -- to find paradise again."
PREVIEW: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $12.50-$19.50. Call (813) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; or www.tbpac.org.
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