Lisa Nelson

Dancing life

Lisa Nelson began her training in traditional modern dance and ballet as a child at the Juilliard School in New York City and then Bennington College in Vermont. In the 1970s, she became interested in diverse approaches to dance improvisation, including performing with Daniel Nagrin’s Workgroup in 1971-72.

In 1972, she took part, along with dancers Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the first performances of Contact Improvisation, and was a crucial observer of the later development of Contact Improvisation through her work with video. In the ensuing decades, she has worked extensively with Steve Paxton, in particular on two improvisation duets that they performed together for several decades: PA RT (1980) and Night Stand (2000).

In later collaborations with K. J. Holmes, Karen Nelson and Scott Smith, she developed the Tuning Scores, a structure for collective improvisations that she teaches internationally since the 1990s.

She is recognized for her editorial and journalistic contributions on dance and improvisation and is the co-editor of the bi-annual dancer's journal Contact Quarterly. Her writings have appeared in Nouvelles de Danse, Contact Quarterly, Writings on Dance, ballettanz, Movement Research, Critical Correspondance, and sarma.be.

She received a NY Bessie award in 1987 and an Alpert Award in the Arts in 2002.