Elizabeth June Bergman is a dancer, improviser, scholar, and educator currently based in Philadelphia. Her work takes the form of solo performance, dance scholarship, dance films, and collaboration with other dance-makers and artists.
Bergman, a recipient of a University Fellowship, is a doctoral candidate (ABD) in the Dance Department at Temple University. She was an Associate Graduate Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Temple (CHAT) for the 2018–2019 academic year. Her dissertation, under the advisement of Dr. Sherril Dodds, uses the case study of Michael Jackson and his dancing chorus in the 1970s and 1980s to examine practices of attribution and recognition, commercialism and commodity culture, and racial politics and racial ideology in the Los Angeles commercial dance industry. She received a Dissertation Completion Grant for Fall 2019 and will defend in late October. Throughout 2016–2018, she created and taught the undergraduate general education course Michael Jackson: Entertainer, Artist, Celebrity.
Bergman holds a BA in dance from DeSales University (2005) and a MFA in dance performance from the University of Iowa (2009). After receiving her masters, she taught Dance History: Baroque to Contemporary, Introduction to Dance Studies, and Yoga in UI's Dance Department.
Bergman was certified as a 200-hour yoga teacher by James Miller in 2011 and received an additional 300-hours training from Rishikesh Yog Peeth in India in 2014.
In addition to her own performance work, she has performed in the work of many independent choreographers including Jennifer Kayle, Charlotte Adams, Rosy Simas, April Sellers, Amy Lynne Barr, Analia Alegre-Femenias, Lynn Andrews, Emily Gastineau, Joanna Rosenthal, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Lela Aisha Jones, and Chrissy Eltvedt.
