Elizabeth Langley

Elizabeth Langley is a performer, choreographer, teacher, dramaturge, creation & rehearsal director. She is the designer of a BFA Contemporary Dance Degree, in the Contemporary Dance department at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Life and career Elizabeth Langley was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1933. Early dance education occurred at the Studio of Creative Dancing in Melbourne. Her father, indicated to her, at a young age, "If you can turn your passion into your profession, you will be the happiest person in the world." From 1960 to 1965 she lived in New York, where she trained in the Martha Graham technique at Graham's studios on East 63rd Street, and experienced the burgeoning modern and post-modern American dance scene. She then moved to Ottawa, Ontario. She undertook a number of jobs: opening a dress boutique, serving as manager of the Café Le Hibou Coffee House, where performers Josh White Jr., Odetta, James Cotton, and Bruce Cockburn headlined, teaching dance at the Strathmere Farm summer day camp in North Gower, Ontario. She taught a Movement for Actors course at the University of Ottawa in the fall of 1975. Among her students was Christopher House, who said, "She always has a question that she's grappling with. This means constantly setting challenges for yourself. There must be the feeling that there is something more. Step back and shake it up!" In 1979, at Concordia University, she designed a university dance degree program geared to training choreographers, as well as technique, became the first chair of the Department of Modern Dance, inaugurated in the 1980/81 academic year. It was renamed the Department of Contemporary Dance in 1987. She describes the development of the program as a key experience. Concentrated study allowed students to create their own choreographic work and teachers did not impose their own technique or develop their work on the cohort. Among those who graduated from the program include, Pierre-Paul Savoie, Jeff Hall (dancer), Jacques Brochu, Isabelle Choinière, Noam Gagnon, Florence Figols, Thea Patterson Sasha Kleinplatz Andrew Tay and Ireni Stamou.