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Liz Curtis is a filmmaker, multimedia dance choreographer, educator, and performer based in Long Beach, California. Liz began her career as a professional dancer, performing in both commercial and concert dance, before her time in front of the camera sparked a transition to working behind it. This transition led her to pursue an MFA in Dance with an emphasis in screendance and multimedia performance, where she discovered the powerful intersection of movement and cinema.

Liz creates visually distinctive, movement-driven films that range from sociopolitical commentary and intimate studies of individual experience to abstract works that explore movement for its own sake. Across her films, she engages with themes of identity, bodily agency, disability, vulnerability, and transformation, at times blurring the boundaries between screendance and documentary or working in experimental forms. Her distinct visual language combines evocative composition, an intimate relationship between camera and performer, and editing that functions as a form of choreography. Her award-winning films have screened internationally at festivals and venues including the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, ADF’s Movies by Movers, DOC LA, and The 92nd Street Y in New York.

Liz’s approach to filmmaking is grounded in her extensive background as a dancer and choreographer in both the commercial and concert dance worlds. As a performer, she has appeared in concert works by Doug Varone (staged by Eddie Taketa), Gerald Casel, Gloria Newman, John Pennington, Susan McLain, Cyrus Parker-Jeannette, and Rebecca Bryant, as well as in film, television, music videos, international tours, and Las Vegas productions. Her choreography has been presented on stage and television, at conferences and the American College Dance Festival, and through screendance and site-specific works.

Liz currently teaches Screendance to MA students at California State University, Long Beach, where she also teaches dance-film production and performance to BFA students, along with undergraduate courses in Ballet and Modern Technique, Dance Composition, and Pilates/Dance Conditioning. She is also the founding Faculty Advisor of the CSULB Screendance Collective. Previously, she taught in Chapman University’s Dance Department for 12 years, where she developed the dance-film program, founded and advised the Chapman Dance Film Club, served as Screendance Specialist, and created and taught courses in dance-film production and performance. Her contributions to dance-film education also include serving as a producer for the video shoot that created editing-tutorial footage for Mitchell Rose’s forthcoming textbook, Reimagining Dance on Screen: A Practical Guide to Dance-Filmmaking, and contributing photography to the publication.

Liz is also a graduate of The Sanford Meisner Center’s Professional Acting Certificate Program and a certified Pilates instructor with dance specialization through BASI, contributing to her integrated, body-centered approach to performance and education.