Liz Lerman Dance Exchange

»	Retrospective Analysis of Arts-based Civic Dialogue Practice

Project Description

The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's project is a retrospective analysis of the Dance Exchange's ongoing practice in arts-based civic dialogue. The project's intents are to gain deeper understanding of and to codify and document the company's practices in arts-based civic dialogue for field benefit, and to strengthen the organization's capacity in this work. The project centers on a dialogue audit—a series of structured gatherings that engage company artists, staff, and participants in past Dance Exchange projects, and advisors from other disciplines to review, record, and analyze the company's methods for arts-based civic dialogue. The company will reflect upon its past projects, including its recent national Hallelujah project, to generate a statement of theory for how dialogue functions within the organization and in relationships with partners, communities, and audiences; and to document dialogue techniques to be added to a Tool Box being created by the Dance Exchange. In this context, Dance Exchange will also consider and plan for a new organizational model of collectively guided artistic leadership to replace the current founder-driven structure in order to expand organizational capacity in arts-based civic dialogue work.