Liz Lerman, Doctor of Fine Arts
You have given the world a new genre of art — non-fiction dance. To greet the new millennium you danced on a dock at dawn with one hundred people in twelve-degree weather. You choreographed eight hundred dancers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Your Small Dances About Big Ideas focused on the Nuremberg Trials to explore conceptions of “justice, vengeance, and forgiveness in the context of genocide then and now.” With the Hallelujah project you enabled the citizens of 15 cities to express what their communities were most “in praise of.” Here on our own campus you helped us examine the many meanings of the human genome project. At the same time you have stretched understandings of who can dance far beyond just those who are young, slim, and trained, to uncover the physically expressive power of everyday people of all ages and body types, including those in wheel chairs. The result is dance as an art truly of the people, by the people, and for the people. Or as the Washington Post has put it: “Liz Lerman choreographs community like no one else.”
I hereby declare you recipient of the honorary degree Doctor of Fine Arts, entitled to all the rights, honors, and privileges appertaining thereto.
June 4, 2006