Dance and Art

My work has always been a channel of communication, first as a dancer, and now as a painter. I have always loved the aesthetic and bending of physical reality that is the province of dance.

Early Influences

This adventure began when my mother, failing to make me sit still at the table, entered me into my first ballet class. I was 5 years old.

"The dance always communicated beyond cultural differences, speaking and uniting even when my knowledge of the language was absent. My body is no longer doing that kind of moving, but I capture and recreate upon my canvases the fleeting, magical moments that I still feel my muscles and tendons."

Dancing Career

During the New York years, Elizabeth danced in numerous performances at Lincoln Center as part of the Shakespeare Festivals in Central Park.

Drawn into the fluid and unconventional nature of modern dance, she was accepted into the studio of Kennedy Center Honoree and MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant recipient Merce Cunningham.

Elizabeth continued to perform professionally in both dance genres, all the while sketching and painting the forms and postures of dance that so informed her creativity on the stage.

Los Angeles

The dance soon took Elizabeth to Los Angeles, where she continued to study and perform.

Fellow ballet students at the Stanley Holden Dance Center included Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patrick Swayze. She worked there with Manhattan Dance Project Artist-In-Residence Russell Clarke, performing on film and in music videos, and was featured as a photographic dance model in avant-garde poses for Designer West magazine.

Dancing Globally

Elizabeth performed in pioneering dance spectaculars across the globe, including at the legendary Alcazar Cabaret in Paris, and in troupes in Japan and Macau, known as “the Las Vegas of the East.

Her costumes were often festooned with feathers and jewels, or minimalized and sleek with bold color defining form. These can be seen now as recurring components yielding to physical form in her paintings.