Liz Lerman (Founding Artistic Director; Direction/Conception) is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator, and speaker. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and has cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble, with dancers whose ages currently range from 25 to 72, into a leading force in contemporary dance. Liz has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the American Choreographer Award, the American Jewish Congress "Golda" Award, an honorary doctorate from Williams College, and Washingtonian Magazine’s 1988 Washingtonian of the Year. In 2002 her work was recognized with a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, and she was recently honored at the Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards and inducted into the University of Maryland’s Alumni Hall of Fame. Liz’s work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival, BalletMet, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. From 1994 to 1996, in collaboration with the Music Hall of Portsmouth, N.H., Liz directed the Shipyard Project, which has been widely noted as an example of the power of art to enhance such values as social capital and civic dialogue. From 1999 to 2002 she led Hallelujah, which engaged people in 15 cities throughout the United States in the creation of a series of dances "in praise of" topics vital to their communities. Her current projects include Ferocious Beauty: Genome and Radical Prayer. She is the author of Teaching Dance to Senior Adults (1983) and the co-author of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process (2003), and has written articles and essays for such publications as Reconstructionism Today, Faith and Form, Movement Research, the Washington Post Book World, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Community, Culture, and Globalization. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Milwaukee, Liz attended Bennington College and Brandeis University, received her B.A. in dance from the University of Maryland, and an M.A. in dance from George Washington University. She is married to storyteller Jon Spelman. Their daughter, Anna, is in her first year of college.