Leopold headshot
Dr. Lizzie Leopold (she, hers) (Executive Director) is a Chicago-based artist/scholar and a Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. As an independent researcher, Leopold is currently co-editing a two volume anthology entitled Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories.  Under contract with the University of Illinois Press, Leopold and co-editor Susan Manning are organizing 48 essays spanning from the Chicago World's Fair to the present moment, across genres and geographies.  She received an interdisciplinary PhD in Theater and Drama from Northwestern University. She also holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and a BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the political economy of choreographic production and circulation, asking questions about the intersection of cultural and financial value. Her essays have been published in Perspectives on American Dance (University Press of Florida), Oxford Handbook to Shakespeare and Dance (Oxford University Press), and Futures of Dance Studies (University of Wisconsin Press, Studies in Dance History series). She has worked extensively in the film archives of mid-century modern dance luminary Sybil Shearer, cataloguing 700+ reels for the Chicago Film Archives and asking questions about valuation, legacy and access.  Leopold is also a choreographer and the director of the Leopold Group, a 2018 Links Hall Co-Mission Resident Artist.
photo by Matthew Gregory Hollis