Shape and Momentum by Lerman, Liz;

Long description:

A choreographic manifesto for life in motion, offering new ways to navigate change and thrive amidst instability

A sequel to Hiking the Horizontal, Liz Lerman's Shape and Momentum: An Insomniac's Guide for a World in Constant Motion is a choreographic manifesto for living in motion—part memoir, part creative toolkit, part philosophical inquiry. Written in a series of essays, from single-paragraph meditations to expansive chapters, the book weaves together personal anecdotes, creative theory, and movement-based wisdom. Lerman draws on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to frame a central question: how do we hold both shape and momentum—form and change—at once? With insight and generosity, she explores creativity as a life practice, rooted in embodied knowledge and accessible to all. Witches from her decade-long project Wicked Bodies appear throughout as fierce, funny guides, helping readers stay curious and grounded. Essays are grouped in thematic sections—lived experience, kinship, rejection, reflection, and radical imagination—culminating in an "Atlas of Creative Tools®," a practical and poetic resource. Bridging dance, education, politics, and spiritual practice, Shape and Momentum offers tools for navigating instability and making a more relational world.

"Internationally acclaimed choreographer Liz Lerman lives her belief that just because creativity is natural doesn't mean we can't cultivate it, and this book shares the work, experiments, and tools built over a lifetime of artistic action.  Just as some dancers hold shapes through their bodies and others burst with momentum, the poetic narratives and analytic insights artfully crafted here offer structure and movement for minds and hearts."—Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University

"This book is filled with practical wisdom drawing on Lerman's powerful capacity to observe the world, explore the depths of experience, and identify and offer tools for how to think, create, connect, and live. Her notion of shape and momentum is one of the most powerful frames I have ever encountered for thinking about change and transformation. [Reading] this book is like taking a brisk walk with Liz Lerman...filled with puzzles, prompts, and personal stories."—Steven Tepper, President of Hamilton College

"Liz Lerman has spent decades marrying artists, audiences, and communities in experiences that have given us new understandings of science, history, social justice, and our shared humanity. [Shape & Momentum] helps us grasp the thrillingly enlightened worldview that has propelled this bold vision. In so doing Lerman models how we, too, might go through life as curious, contemplative, and generous human beings open to change and evolution."—Pamela Tatge, Executive and Artistic Director, Jacob's Pillow

Table of Contents:

Epigraph

Dedication

Author's Note Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

Witches Can Read

Soft Skills: A Fool's Journey

PART ONE: LIVING AND EXPERIENCING

You Can Be the Narrator of My Story If Knowledge Inhabits Us (It's a Verb)

Big Story Little Story Father and the Military

Healing Wars: Two Stories

Identity, Death, and Expertise

You Cannot Reckon Without Addressing Shame Inviting Lived Experiences

Caretaking Old and New Moving Memory Future

PART TWO: SHAPE AND MOMENTUM: THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS A CHOREOGRAPHIC PUZZLE AND A THEORY OF CHANGE

What Makes a Witch a Witch Dots

Dwelling in Shape and Momentum

Four Case Studies: monuments, archiving, dementia and ritual changes School Stories

Changing the Shape of the Audience

An Ode to Relationship: the Long of It, the Beauty and Conjuring of Martha Wittman Choreographic Thinking in Times of Trouble

An Ode to a Rubber Band An Ode to Aboutness

Having a Mess Avoiding a Mess An Animal Proves Me Wrong

PART THREE: REJECTION AND REFLECTION

The Witch of Insomnia Help From Friends

27 Attempts

Reflection through Generations Persistence and Falling Stories

Nature of Rest and Unfinished Life of Work A Spell for Forgiveness

PART FOUR: THE ATLAS OF CREATIVE TOOLS®

Parados

Toolbox as Documentation What's in a Recipe?

Aphorisms as Tools

Books for Children and Young Adults Gimmick

The Students Think Theory is a Tool Thinking Grids a Favorite

How Tools Travel and Why the Journey Makes Them More Flexible Differences

A Scientist and a Poet Walk into an Atlas It's Like Breathing or the Tides

EPILOGUE

Gallery of Witches Three Spells

Seeking and Fixing Things in a Middle of a Soybean Field Acknowledgements

Appendix Citations