Rachel Lieberman

still from video by Boyu Huang

coming soon: Dream Flood Dream
(working title)

Set to premier May 7-9 2026 as a party of ARENA DANCES’ annual Candy Box Festival.

photo by Canaan Mattson

Desecrate (excerpts)

June, 2025
Choreography and set/costume design by Rachel Lieberman
Performed by Dominic Burkhardt, Ay-M, Javan MnGrezzo, Rachel Lieberman, and Addie Smith
Premiered as part of Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival

A dance about a prayer, about fringes, about scrambling for each other, against each other, about building heros, and villains, and victims, and rise, and fall. A dance about hypervigilance, and enacting devastation, about symbols distorted, about destroying something while pretending to save it, and how to stomach the horrors. About not knowing how to stomach the horrors. 

photo by Trista McGovern

P r o c e s s i o n (full video)

May, 2025
Choreography, costume, and sound by Rachel Lieberman
Commissioned and performed by Threads Dance Project

I want to scratch the scab until it bleeds
fresh and won’t stop
and everything inside pours freely again

how
to hold all of this
in a body
it is so much bigger than

how to hold anything at all

photo by Kam Herndon

Xy’lem & Phlo’em (full video)

October, 2024
A collaborative creation and performance by Rachel Lieberman (chorepgraphy and sound design) and Dane Cree (animation and costume design)
Premiered at the Walker Art Center’s 52nd Choreographer’s Evening

Mixing original animation, movement, and sound, this work explores interconnectedness and shapeshifting of place and experience. Amidst imagery of trees and forests, dancers are imagined both in the woods, through the woods, and as the woods

photo by Zach Green

WAIL (excerpts)

March, 2024
Choreography and set/costume design by Rachel Lieberman
Performed by Rachel Lieberman, Addie Smith,
Sarah McCullough, and Odessa Rain
Premiered at Black Label Movement‘s inaugural Movers Make

According to USA Today, “Marine biologists puzzled over why whales are beaching themselves.” But not me. I sit at the brown shore of the Mississippi River under bright light. 

The seaweed in heaps, like the wet black curls piled in the clawfoot tub. 

The parts of me torn out along with float by. Shipwreck. 

This is not a mikveh — world melting into the sea.

photo by Boyu Huang

Forgive, Forget, & the Fool (full video)

May, 2023
Choreography and set/costume design by Rachel Lieberman
Performed by Rachel Lieberman (dance), Addie Smith (dance), and Anna Dolde (saxophone)
Premiered at ARENA DANCES’ Candy Box Dance Festival

Romance. Saxophone. Heartache. Dance. Heartbreak. Three Bachelors in Paradise and a giant dress. Forgive, Forget and the Fool. Spend 14 minutes riding this roller coaster called life and love with us. Restart, Reset, Return. Love us forever and we’ll love you back. 

photo by Bill Cameron

Flight (excerpt)

October, 2022
Choreography and set design by Rachel Lieberman
Commissioned and performed by Alternative Motion Project

If the home-land is not a some-where or some-point but a blur of lines across the map. Traced not in coordinates but in stories, ritual, chromosomes, and patterns of flight. Of leavings, returnings, and leavings again.

photo by Sophea

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neither Here nor There

May, 2019
Commissioned by Laura Levinson & Don’t You Feel It Too
Performed by Rachel Lieberman with original live sound by Xochi de La Luna

What is it to love something that never existed? All at once to mourn a place, to keep it alive, to hate it, and to re-create it. A solo embodying Jewish diasporic psychology and trauma, the darkness and horror of the Israeli Defense Force, offense in the name of defense.