Herberger Institute Professor Liz Lerman to be honored as Dance Magazine Award winner
Liz Lerman guides dancers through creative movement, expression and analysis. Photo by Caitlin O'Hara
Dance Magazine has announced that Arizona State University Herberger Institute Professor Liz Lerman will be honored as a Dance Magazine Award winner at a ceremony Dec. 2 in New York City.
“I consider awards a reminder to keep working and to use the recognition to push urgent changes and fresh ways of thinking about our field,” Lerman said. “I wish I could take all of my students so that Dance Magazine could see the future in the wonderful minds, bodies and spirits of my community that is ASU. As it is, LaTasha Barnes, my ASU colleague, will be there. And as far as I am concerned, I would like to pass this wonderful award to her immediately.”
Lerman is a dance legend, choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker. She was named the first Institute Professor at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in 2016. A former fellow of the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Lerman is currently a fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre at ASU.
Since 1954, the Dance Magazine Awards have celebrated the outstanding achievements of individuals and organizations in the dance industry. The awards are given “in appreciation of the artistry, integrity and resilience that dance artists have demonstrated over the course of their careers.”
“It’s wonderful to be honored by Dance Magazine,” Lerman said. “I am so glad that a part of my artistic life is taking place here at ASU, where I get to teach very inquisitive people while also pursuing current projects such as the Atlas of Creative Tools and the research with the Library of Congress on nomenclature and embodied knowledge systems. Every decade of life brings its challenges, and being here for this period in my life and in the life of the country is a gift.”
Lerman will be honored along with George Faison, Joanna Haigood, Mavis Staines and Shen Wei.
According to Dance Magazine, this year’s honorees represent excellence on and off the stage: “The dancers, choreographers and educators in this remarkable group of honorees are invested in work that often transcends the proscenium.”
Lerman has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance and a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the 2024–25 academic year, she is doing a residency with Harvard University called “My Body Is a Library.” Conceived by Lerman, the residency examines living knowledge and questions like: How is your body like a library? How is a library like a body? What knowledge is living within both that needs celebration, illumination or amending?
The multidisciplinary research project is developed in collaboration with movement artists and librarians.
Lerman was also awarded a 2024 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio writing residency, during which she spent several weeks near Lake Como in Italy researching and writing her upcoming book as well as sharing stories and spaces with the other artists, scientists, scholars and practitioners. The Bellagio Residency supports “groundbreaking people and ideas that improve well-being and make opportunity universal and sustainable.” Lerman’s upcoming book, “An Insomniac’s Guide to a World in Constant Motion,” is a collection of personal essays set to be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025.
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