Choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, Liz Lerman, will be the visiting artist for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (MFAIA) program’s Spring 2013 residency.

Founder of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976, Lerman cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance until 2011, when she handed the artistic leadership of the company over to the next generation of Dance Exchange artists.

In addition to a workshop for MFAIA students, Lerman will be giving a public talk titled “An Artist Researches: Inquiry, Engagement, and Discovery as Engines of Art,” on Sunday, February 3rd at the Haybarn Theatre at Goddard College.

Over the course of a 35-year career, Lerman has conducted research by probing into archives, interviewing experts, and “rattling around in someone else’s universe,” including such specialized environments as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

At the same time, her choreographic process has turned rehearsal rooms and community sites into laboratories for discovery through the application of artistic tools, improvisational structures, and ever-evolving approaches to collaboration. Showing video excerpts of her dance/theater works, Lerman’s talk will discuss the concept of research as both the springboard and the essence of artistic process. With an experiential demonstration she will offer additional ways to think about aspects of our own processes as forms of research.