Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer

by Liz Lerman

Overview

Award-winning choreographer shares insights and methods for making real art in the real world

The unique career of choreographer Liz Lerman has taken her from theater stages to shipyards, and from synagogues to science labs. In this wide-ranging collection of essays and articles, she reflects on her life-long exploration of dance as a vehicle for human insight and understanding of the world around us. Lerman has been described by the Washington Post as "the source of an epochal revolution in the scope and purposes of dance art." Here, she combines broad outlooks on culture and society with practical applications and accessible stories. Her expansive scope encompasses the craft, structure, and inspiration that bring theatrical works to life as well as the applications of art in fields as diverse as faith, aging, particle physics, and human rights law. Offering readers a gentle manifesto describing methods that bring a horizontal focus to bear on a hierarchical world, this is the perfect book for anyone curious about the possible role for art in politics, science, community, motherhood, and the media.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819574367
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	05/02/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

LIZ LERMAN is a choreographer, writer, educator and speaker, and the recipient of honors including a 2002 MacArthur "Genius" fellowship. She founded Dance Exchange in 1976 and led it until 2011. She teaches Critical Response Process, creative research, and the intersection of art and science at institutions such as Harvard, Yale School of Drama, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. As of 2016 she is an Institute Professor at Arizona State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
QUESTIONS AS A WAY OF LIFE
Fueling the Imagination
Asking Questions as a Way of Life
Two Dances: The Oldest and One Not Yet Made
Wondering about Books
The Sounds of St. Albans
Was Einstein a Choreographer?
Influence, Inquiry, Action
WHO GETS TO DANCE?
Manifesto
The Roosevelt, Dancing
The Shipyard, Dancing
Speech and Silence: The Who Matters
A Liberation in the Gallery
Being Another: One Kind of Technique
WHAT IS THE DANCING ABOUT
I Met a Physicist
Finding the Fish: On Meaning, Narrative, and Subject Matter Dancing
Dancing on Both Sides of the Brain: An Essay in Text and Movement
Justice and Genetics: Two Program Notes
The Problem of Abstraction
Two Ways To Be an Angel
PORTFOLIO OF SITE-SPECIFIC DANCES
WHERE IS THE DANCE HAPPENING?
Scene at a Bedside
Choreographing Space
My Favorite Night at Temple Micah
The Stage and Why It Matters
Three Places, Three Stories
STRUCTURES AND UNDERPINNINGS
A Brief Conversation with a Friend
What Happens on a Residency?
Dilemmas of Practice in Art and Healing: Response to an Email
Structure: the Container that Holds the Dance
What Is The Toolbox?
Rehearsal, Defined and Redefined
Free Fall
PORTFOLIO OF STAGE DANCES
TRANSDOMAIN PRACTICES
Calling the Ancestors
In Defense of Creative Research
Onward with Petichta
Fresh Readings: Reviewing Books on Tango and Nureyev
Ruminations and Curiosities: A Series of Anecdotes and the Questions That Follow
Partnering and People
Seven Paths to Creativity
POLITICS
Two Assertions
A Return to Inquiry
Activism, Professionalism, Purity
It Is Easier to be Against President Bush Than It Is to Change Small Dynamics in Our Own Field
A Job Swap and Slow Banking: Two Op-Eds
Pushing Back: A Rant in Three Movements
Small Righteous Angers
BULKY LOVE
To the Attendance Monitor at Sligo Creek Middle School
Motherhood: Stories and an Interview
Representation Found and Lost
Critical Response at Home
Bulky Love
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: List of Choreographed Works, 1974-2010
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Lerman is that rare artist who has pioneered new pathways into the human spirit, and who is blessed with the facility of not just creating her art but of explaining it as well. Hiking the Horizontal is a combination of explanation and inquiry, couched in a narrative that is contagious with sensitivity, grace, and wisdom."—Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman, rabbi, Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual

"Liz Lerman defies categorization, mixing ideas and practices we are taught to keep separate. She catapults herself into art and politics, science and spirituality, community-based and high art contexts. This generous book will give heart to artists who both respect tradition and seek their own path."—Jan Cohen Cruz, director, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life

"When Liz speaks a word it is more than a word. The word becomes a world. When Liz speaks a sentence, a whole/holy history unfurls. She invites us to see, sense, feel and breathe. When Liz speaks her wordslisten."—Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Founding Artistic Director and Visioning Partner, Urban Bush Women

"Liz teaches us that artists and citizens can dance a new world into existence through questions. Creating across the horizontal is both the destination and the journey, and the essential tools of Hiking will help us make it 'there', together."—Vijay Gupta, Violinist, Founder of Street Symphony

"...a book full of inspiring and provocative wisdom from one of America's most influential choreographers. Through her journey, we tap into our own creativity by considering what it means to 'turn discomfort into inquiry', 'rattle around in other people's universes' and much more."—Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director, Jacob's Pillow

Editorial Reviews

"Lerman's concise text inspires and equips the reader with a host of new perspectives from which to tackle the making of artworks. Lerman's ideas are novel, deep, and challenging and, as such, require time to take in, analyze, and potentially adopt."—Lisa Jo Sagolla, BackStage magazine

"[R]eaders will be excited to evaluate and evolve their own practices. Anyone interested in making or teaching dance, regardless of where the dance takes place, who is dancing, or what it is about, will agree that this book matters."—Karen Schupp, Journal of Dance Education

"The strengths of this book lie in its broad reach and in Lerman's capacity to share nuanced learning in conversational language. She investigates numerous processes central to making, working, and living in various professional and personal communities. 'Hiking' with wisdom and humility across the horizon of these years, she manages, nonetheless, to dig deeply. Highly recommended."—S.E. Friedler, Choice

"Hiking the Horizontal constructs a portrait of a compelling artist whose convictions are at the core of her creative engagement in dance—a choreographer whose activism is personal."—Rita Felciano, Dance Chronicle

"Hiking the Horizontal is a necessary addition to the libraries of dance aficionados and artists. But it also has much to offer to the broader dialogue on the arts. Lerman is thoughtful, insightful and gentle in her approach, and her message carries deep value."—Peter DeVries, Dance International

"Lerman is that rare artist who has pioneered new pathways into the human spirit, and who is blessed with the facility of not just creating her art but of explaining it as well. Hiking the Horizontal is a combination of explanation and inquiry, couched in a narrative that is contagious with sensitivity, grace, and wisdom."—Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman, rabbi, Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship and Ritual

"Liz Lerman defies categorization, mixing ideas and practices we are taught to keep separate. She catapults herself into art and politics, science and spirituality, community-based and high art contexts. This generous book will give heart to artists who both respect tradition and seek their own path."—Jan Cohen Cruz, director, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life

"When Liz speaks a word it is more than a word. The word becomes a world. When Liz speaks a sentence, a whole/holy history unfurls. She invites us to see, sense, feel and breathe. When Liz speaks her wordslisten."—Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Founding Artistic Director and Visioning Partner, Urban Bush Women

"Liz teaches us that artists and citizens can dance a new world into existence through questions. Creating across the horizontal is both the destination and the journey, and the essential tools of Hiking will help us make it 'there', together."—Vijay Gupta, Violinist, Founder of Street Symphony

"...a book full of inspiring and provocative wisdom from one of America's most influential choreographers. Through her journey, we tap into our own creativity by considering what it means to 'turn discomfort into inquiry', 'rattle around in other people's universes' and much more."—Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director, Jacob's Pillow

From the Publisher