Speaking to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, former President Barack Obama had a request:
"Do not boo. Vote."
The line urging people not to boo but rather to vote is one he’s used often over the years. And, it got our next guest thinking about the best ways to get people to do things differently than the way they’re doing them.
Liz Lerman is a choreographer and professor at Arizona State University and joined The Show to talk more about her effort.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning.
LIZ LERMAN: Hi, nice to be with you.
BRODIE: Nice to talk to you. So one of the things that you wrote on social media after hearing this was to give people alternatives and amazing things can happen. So how do we go about giving people alternatives?
LERMAN: Well, it's a, it's a great question and also how do we get people prepared to receive the alternatives or to feel that they're empowered to actually follow through. But specifically beginning with the idea that when you tell people no, don't do something, you, people still don't know what to do. I liken it to when my daughter was 2, you know, and you would say, don't touch the stove, but she still doesn't know what to do with her hands.
So you have to say, well, put your hands over here or put them over here and make it a game and then suddenly we're into something. So it's partly I was really moved when I heard him say that, that no isn't enough giving people something to do, is fantastic.
And actually at the same convention, right, they started saying Michelle Obama kept saying, do something and everybody said that's good. Do something is good. But some people need more than that. That is to say it's too big an area they need, you know, more specificity in order to know what to do. I think we need to do both.
BRODIE: Well, it's interesting because I was thinking of in, in preparing for this interview, two taglines that I wonder if you maybe think could have been more effective in terms of Nancy Reagan's Just Say No. And Nike's Just Do It like those seem like they're kind of big things that maybe people don't quite know what to do with.
LERMAN: Yes, I can. and at their time, they sort of come around at the same time to Just Say No is really not enough because people caught up in whatever their obsessions are around that need help that, you know, and in that case, and this is where I kind of wish we had more opportunity to practice. Well, we, we in the arts call, you know, collaborating, getting help from people. It's interesting.
I'm co-teaching with somebody here and they do DIY technology and so they've, they've done incredible stuff on their own, figuring things out. Me, I need to get help and I ask for help and then I get help solving my technology problems. Those are two different approaches. They're both good. They're both interesting. The Just Do It is interesting too. I mean, do you think it helps you got that in your ear and you get up, you can do it, you can do it.
It has a little bit more of an encouraging factor to it. I think people need encouragement and I don't think it's like you need it once. I think you kind of need it every day. Come on, you can do it, you can do it. It's a beautiful thing, you know, and you watch marathons and things like that and people are all along the sides. Come on, keep going, keep going. So it's not even just getting started. It's being able to sustain it.
BRODIE: Right. Well, so I wonder how this sort of plays itself out in the work that you do. Like I can imagine, you know, you are in on stage, you know, with a number of dancers and you're practicing the choreography that you, that you've put together and somebody is maybe putting, you know, not quite doing it correctly and yes, you need to tell them what to do to do it correctly. But isn't it also helpful if they know what they're not doing correctly, so they know not to do it?
LERMAN: Well, it kind of depends. Right. And some of that depends on the nature of harm. Look, if you keep doing it like that, you, you're not, your knees are gonna give out, right? So let's not do it like that. So some of it's that way.
Some of it is actually back to me, Mark, I mean, I would ask myself, does it matter? Does this person actually have to do it this way? Is that person telling me something I don't know and doing it in a more interesting way? And should I take that in? And that's one of these questions that I have about the idea of improvisation, which I know a lot of people again think just lives in the world of the arts. But I don't think so. I think our lives are fully improvisatory.
And that part of the question you and I are talking about today is when do we give ourselves very tight systems by which we're going to work? And when do we open that out and experiment a little bit? And I think we need both. But you're right. Sometimes you just have to say to somebody, no, don't put your hand like that, put it, you know, do it like this, you do have to say no. And actually in the world of consent, we want to understand how to say no because we need to.
BRODIE: So I want to bring it back. We have about a minute or so left back to sort of where we started in, the world of politics. And it would seem to me that there's a very easy solution to this right, vote for me or vote for this person that you want someone to vote for? Do you find that there's a lot of that going on or is there mostly, is it morally mostly like affirmative, like do this vote for me, vote for this person or don't vote for that person, don't do what this person is saying.
LERMAN: Well, personally, I mean, for me, I'd rather sort of see it lay out a set of goals and sort of values and a kind of way of life and that you're giving people ways to fill their imaginations. So they can imagine what would it be like to have this particular thing happen? Can and then have that help them to make decisions and back to that means giving people agency. So I go back to my 2 year old daughter, right? Don't do that. Don't do that or tell her put your hands here. Let's experiment. She is building and practicing agency for taking action in the world based on her own imagination. And of course, that's what I'm interested in.
