Project Description
The purpose of the Shipyard Project (1994-96) was to explore memories and issues, historic and contemporary, of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and their significance to the lives of people in Portsmouth. The project involved the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and was sponsored by The Music Hall of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a performing arts presenter. The project was conceived by the Music Hall as a way to address the high community anxiety around recent downsizing and two efforts to close the naval shipyard. An initial goal was to focus a Dance Exchange residency on the implications of closing the yard and to galvanize support. However, through the dance company's community dialogue process, other issues emerged. The project culminated in a three-week event that featured an opening ceremony, performances by Lerman's company involving middle school students and community performers, seacoast songs and stories composed and performed by musicians and songwriters from Portsmouth, a shipyard fashion show "annotated" with stories collected for the project, and a finale dance on boats and bridges featuring the Liz Lerman dancers and community members.

Civic Engagement/Dialogue Activities
An advisory committee was formed to help clarify and maintain the project's vision. Throughout the three-year project, Lerman and her dancers, shipyard workers, civilian and military personnel, youth, and retired shipyard professionals told their stories to one another. These stories were both the civic dialogue and became the raw material from that the Dance Exchange developed dance pieces that interpreted local people's experience of the shipyard. Various issues came forward in the storytelling phase: Fear of the base closing; the shipyard's nuclear waste storage and fears of contamination; racism and sexism in the military; the challenges and fears faced by military wives; and recollections of historic events such as the 1960s submarine launch that sank and killed a full crew on board. During the culminating events, story circles extended topic discussions initated at the advisory meetings to a wider group of participants. There were informal community discussions at public lunches with Liz Lerman as well as rehearsals that actively facilitated a dialogue on project themes among community participants.

As a result of the project, participants explored value systems and beliefs different from their own and discovered unexpected connections between people. The nature of the issues that came forth, combined with the experiences of those who participated in the project, inspired several advisory committee members to continue meeting for months, and even years, after the project's culminating events in 1996. The project also had transformative powers for the artists as well. Despite the enthusiasm of the shipyard project director and Music Hall board president, and what was viewed by the artists and community members as a successful project for the community, the Music Hall leadership did not support future projects of a similar community-based nature. A changeover in both board leadership and executive director, and their combined fears of the labor intensiveness and high costs of such a project prevented full support for this new programming direction.

Information Sources
Program and promotional materials, Shipyard Project; promotional materials, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; interview, Jane Hirshberg, project director.