Everybody Say Hallelujah

Everybody Say Hallelujah
Commentary on the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange community performance initiative, 1998–2002

by Linda Frye Burnham

INTRODUCTION

(Written in 2001 to introduce this major project in critical writing and documentation.)

In 1998, the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange began a multiyear, nationwide initiative called "Hallelujah," creating new performance works with communities all across the U.S. At this writing, the project extends into 2002 (see "Hallelujah Schedule").

There are a great many things to say about "Hallelujah," and many significant questions to ask. I hope to get around to all of them by the end of 2002.

The Dance Exchange "Hallelujah" initiative is intended to "celebrate edge-of-the-millennium America in all of its vividness, beauty, strength and quirkiness." In residencies in some 15 cities and towns across the country, the Dance Exchange is meeting with presenters and community organizations to gather from all walks of life a core of interested individuals at each site. Their interaction is producing a series of evening-length performances that bring together the professional dance company onstage with local people of all ages, disciplines and backgrounds. Each project focuses on an array of new dance works called "In Praise of …," intended to reflect the community’s issues, ideas and aspirations. Each event also features a sampling of work from previous "Hallelujahs" threading all the projects together.

Each of these community projects calls for years of expert organizing, teaching, workshop leadership, co-creation, staging and presentation, as well as intense interface with people and groups of all kinds. The Vermont project, for instance, took periodic visits over four years of getting acquainted with the people of Burlington, St. Albans, Montpelier and Vergennes, gaining their trust and calling forth their voices, hopes and dreams — and their willingness to dance in public. When off the road, the Dance Exchange spends its time at home in Takoma Park, Md. (suburban Washington, D.C.), learning and honing the skills to pull off projects of this magnitude. They also run the Dance Exchange school between gigs.

Early in the initiative, Liz Lerman and the company realized they wanted the projects to celebrate these communities, not denigrate their shortcomings and seek out their failings. "After projects in which we examined some of the painful issues in our shared histories," said choreographer Lerman, "we became aware that people are ready to celebrate. Perhaps it’s the arrival of the new millennium. In any case, I hope 'Hallelujah' will help people to see new paths for dance into the coming century." But all is not sunshine and roses. What they discovered in the process was that celebration inevitably involves a simultaneous commemoration of "hard times endured," and, consequently, requires the telling of tales of suffering, disaster and injustice.

One other aspect of the work needs pointing out: Liz Lerman has always felt "dance is for everybody," and is well known for creating and nurturing a dance company comprising people of all ages and physical ability. She does not see this precept as an excuse for lax performance standards, but rather as an opportunity for reimagining the spectrum of excellence along which all performance should spin. "The cutting edge is enormous," asserts Lerman. "There is this extraordinary spectrum of artistic activity that we can live along." That means Lerman has developed a method for inclusion that can put any number of first-time performers on the stage with the company, ask the best of everyone and craft a work of balance and beauty — all the more beautiful, perhaps, for its incorporation of as many body types, energy levels, physical capabilities, emotional sensibilities, life stories and viewpoints as possible.

But dance is for the professional dancers, too, so "Hallelujah" includes a body of works for and by the multigenerational company, calling forth their expertise, experience and aspirations to do their best as modern and postmodern dancers. Lerman took the company’s desires into account in planning "Hallelujah," and because of that the Dance Exchange will emerge from the whole project with a number of polished new works in its repertoire, as well as a treasurehouse of stories about America.

Finally, the process of each "Hallelujah" produces a particular focus for each new performance work, emerging out of the years of workshops, dinners, coffees, conversations, soul-searches and late-night bull sessions involved in each project. The trick, say Lerman and the company members, is to "keep the funnel open" as long as possible, so that many people, issues and ideas can be included in the final focus for each new work.

Original CAN/API publication: May 2001