Choreographer Liz Lerman is the Founding Artistic Director of Liz Lerman dance Exchange, created in 1976 in Washington, DC (Lerman left the company in the summer of 2011). She is a pioneer in making site-specific dances and including various communities in artistic and civic engagement projects that often mix dance with spoken word, imagery, and music. She also became known for including seniors as dancers in her company. Among many honors, Lerman received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002.