LIZ LERMAN (Founding Artistic Director, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) has choreographed works that have been seen throughout the United States and abroad.  Combining dance with realistic imagery, her works are defined by the spoken word, drawing from literature, personal experience, philosophy, and political and social commentary.  Over the past 28 years she has received recognition for her work with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and as a solo artist. In 2002, she received a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship for her visionary work. She has received an American Choreographer Award, the American Jewish Congress "Golda" award, the first annual Pola Nirenska Award, the Mayor's Art Award, and was named Washingtonian Magazine's Washingtonian of the Year in 1988. Liz’s work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival, Dancing in the Street, BalletMet, and The Kennedy Center.  Her choreographic work has received support from AT&T, Meet The Composer, American Festival Project, National Endowment for the Arts, National Performance Network Creation Fund, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. In 1997, Liz directed and collaborated with The Music Hall in creating The Shipyard Project in Portsmouth, NH. That project led to her three-year Hallelujah project, which involved people in 15 communities throughout the United States in an exploration of our reasons to celebrate everyday life.  Her current choreographic project, Ferocious Beauty: Genome, is an investigation of the impact of genetic research on our lives. 

Liz is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist for arts and community organizations both nationally and internationally.  She recently participated in Harvard University’s Saguaro Seminar, which gathers thinkers from around the United States together in order to promote growth of social capital and civic connectedness in America. Her book, Teaching Dance to Senior Adults, was published in 1983 and in 2003, she co-authored (with John Borstel) Critical Response Process: A method for getting useful feedback on anything you make, from dance to dessert. She attended Bennington College, Brandeis University and holds a B.A. in dance from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in dance from George Washington University. She is married to storyteller Jon Spelman.  Their daughter, Anna, was born in 1988.

PETER DIMURO (Artistic Director, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) has performed, taught, and choreographed professional artists and those new to art-making, for the past twenty-five years. A company member for the past ten years at Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, he is the newly named Artistic Director. Highlights of previous years include leading the company’s groundbreaking “Music Hall Shipyard Project”, and many sites of the multi-city “Hallelujah” Project. Peter currently leads the company’s tour of Near/Far/In/Out, an evolving performance work and workshop series, inspired by the culture and the voices of LGBT communities nationally, in addition to his direction of company performances, residencies, and programs. He is also creator of Gumdrops & Funny Uncles, a project that considers “family” anew, in multiple ways with the addition of personal histories and the life experiences of local participants and company members. Peter has made new works for Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Aura Dance Theatre (Kaunus, Lithuania), the Something Different series at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Florida Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and numerous companies and college dance departments, most recently as a guest artist at American University. Peter was named as a 2000 White House Millennial Artist. He is a recipient of several grants over the past two decades, the most recent from the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund. 

MARGOT GREENLEE completed her MFA at the Ohio State University in 1999. While living in Ohio, she conducted dance residencies for the Ohio Arts Council, taught at Ohio Wesleyan University, and founded Total Theater, Inc., a multidisciplinary performing lab. Additionally, she performed for choreographers such as Victoria Uris, Michael Kelly Bruce and Bridget Moore. Her work focuses on character-driven movement theater and is often created in collaboration with other artists, including composers Neil Cassidy, Todd Harvey, and Dave Sudak; writers Tira Palmquist and Terry Hermsen; and visual artists Angelica Pozo and Chris Mohler. As a dance educator, Margot has been an artist with the Ohio Arts Council's Arts in Education program since 1996 conducting multi-week choreography residencies for elementary students with culminating community performances. Teacher training sessions have happened as part of the Dance Exchange’s Community Crossover Institutes in Washington, D.C.; the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Whole Schools Institute in Cleveland, Mississippi; at the Perpich Center for Arts and Education in Minneapolis; the Children’s Dance Foundation and Alabama Ballet in Birmingham; and at the Maryland Artist Teacher Institute at the University of Maryland/College Park. As a company member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, in addition to her performing responsibilities, she serves as Education Coordinator for youth, teen and adult dance programs, has been Project Director for the Vermont, Michigan and National Hallelujah projects, and conducts Critical Response Process workshops.

ELIZABETH JOHNSON has been with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange since 1998 after graduating from Connecticut College with a B.A. in Dance and a minor in Theatre, and training at London Contemporary Dance School.  She is a choreographer, dancer and the Director of the Dance Exchange’s Teen Exchange program. As a company member, Elizabeth has created dances, taught workshops, and led projects in communities nationally and internationally with hip hop artists, environmental activists, healthcare workers, religious leaders, children, seniors, high school teachers and professional dancers. Her work with teens has been featured across the country as well as at home in the metro-DC area through bi-annual multi-disciplinary National Teen Institutes for young artists. Working with Celeste Miller in collaboration with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival she has “Set Curriculum in Motion,” teaching high school science and math through kinesthetic learning methods. She is a recipient of a D.C. Arts and Humanities Young Artists grant for her work with young dancers and spoken word artists. Her choreographic work is driven by athleticism, physiology, and the desire to climb rocks.

TED JOHNSON, an Iowa native, has been working with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange since the fall of 2001 and has been a member of Bebe Miller Company since 1995. He has had the pleasure of working with a wide array of choreographers and companies including Ralph Lemon Company, David Alan Harris, the Yard, Amy Sue Rosen, Li Chiao-Ping, Eun Me Ahn, Barbara Grubel and, currently, Barbara Mahler. A former singer, with a background in musical theater, Ted finds physical nurture from the work of Barbara Mahler and Susan Klein (Klein Technique), as well as in the practice of contact/improvisation and the bodywork approach of Zero Balancing.

MATT MAHANEY, from West Virginia, discovered dance at an early age through his younger sister, and earned his undergraduate degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts.  Matt has performed works by, and studied with, Brenda Daniels, Sean Sullivan, Trish Casey, Scot Rink, Alberto (Tito) Delsaz.  He has also studied and performed with his mentor, David Beadle.  Currently an adjunct artist with the Dance Exchange, his first public performance with the company was on October 25, 2003, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, DC.  Matt also produces his own work, which includes but is not limited to digital video, music, choreography, and sculpture.

MARTHA WITTMAN has been a teacher, dancer and choreographer for the past 40 years. As a young performer, she danced with Juilliard Dance Theatre under the direction of Doris Humphrey and in the Ruth Currier, Joseph Gifford and Anna Sokolow dance companies. From 1968 to 1996, Martha was an associate choreographer with the Dances We Dance Company directed by Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin where her choreography was toured throughout the U.S. and parts of Europe. Awards in choreography include three NEA fellowships and the Doris Humphrey Fellowship from the American Dance Festival. Most recently, she received a choreography fellowship from the Maryland State Arts Council. Martha has shown works at Dance Place and Joy of Motion in Washington, DC. She is the recipient of two awards from Dance/USA’s National College Choreographers Initiative.  Her work on those commissions—one in New Mexico and one in Pennsylvania—is informing her latest choreographic exploration titled Imprints on a Landscape: The Mining Project. For many years, she was a faculty member at Bennington College in Vermont. She is a practitioner of T’ai Chi Ch’uan and a certified teacher of Skinner Releasing.