Lisa Schmidt/Lani Nahele is a performing terpsichorean artist, choreographer and movement educator. She received her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase. In New York City, while on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham studio, she danced and performed with Ohad Naharin. She joined the Trisha Brown Dance Company in 1985. In the seven years she danced with the company, she had the good fortune to be part of the building process of six works with Trisha. In 1992 she spent several years in France, Spain and Germany working independently and in collaboration with gifted dancers and choreographers including Frey Faust, Helge Musial, Dieter Heitkamp, Ka Rustler and Eva Geueke. In Germany she was awarded a commission and created a women’s quintet with original music compositions by Erich Kory and Erling Wold.
Lisa studied for four years with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and has since developed a body of teaching that integrates the science of the body into movement research, articulation, and expression. With a decades-long practice of improvisational dance, she dances an on-going practice, the “Underscore +/- “, with a group started by and danced with Nancy Stark Smith for over ten years. She holds certifications in Body-Mind Centering, Circulatory Massage, Ortho-Bionomy, Reiki, Gyrotonic, Gyrokinesis, and Pilates. She has been a guest lecturer at Smith, Julliard, Marlboro, Bard, and Keene Colleges and was a dance professor at UMass Amherst and Springfield College where she restaged a version of Set And Reset.
ID: A photo of Lani Nahele smiling into the camera. She has short blonde hair and blue eyes. Photo courtesy of the artist.