I noticed my unique pizzazle in the 80’s when tweaking fashion & dance trends to come up with my own costumed dance rituals.

An avid soccer competitor, the playing field got me “musing”. Endorphins and oxygen might’ve had something to do with the musical voices saying things out of the ether. It wasn’t a tactic to confuse my opponents, theatrics just flowed out of me. I discovered my love for performance doing musicals in Cupertino where Apple Computer started. The fruit orchards, plentiful at the time, were quickly replaced by tech offices and tract homes. Not much of an endorsement. Admittedly, I use Apple products to make magical videos and prints.

Committing I studied dance, theater and philosophy in college and started to perform in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We In my 30’s I met the love of my life, a touring musician/composer. We’ve since toured our performance widely and have lived worked in many places in North America and Europe.

One of our biggest projects was building off-grid in the Chihuahuan desert near the border of Mexico. This is where I went deep and wide into La Lee Lee videos and print making.

Biography Leralee Whittle trained as a dance artist, performing for Anouk van Djick, Nita Little, Rosy Simas, Tandy Beal, Scott Wells and others.

Post-college training has included Modern, Postmodern, Contemporary, Senegalese and Improvisation Dance, Movement Research, Action Theater, Qigong, Contact Improvisation, Energy Medicine, Process-Oriented Psychology, video, printmaking and building off-grid. 

Leralee held a dance, somatics and healing practice for 15 years in Santa Cruz, Ca where she was a lead collaborator with Nita Little in relational intelligence research and improvisation performance.

Her choreography and video art have been experienced in theaters, galleries, festivals, dance studios, living rooms, and as public art in parks and sports facilities. She’s been presented in Dinamiche Scomposte Festival, Italy, Twin Cities Film Festival, Twin Cities/Montreal Choreographer Exchange, PWNW, Portland, La Esquina Gallery, Kansas City, CAPSULE, KCMO, Rosy Simas Danse/Southern Theater, Minneapolis, UCP, KCMO, and Aria, Barcelona.

She is the recipient of a public art commission, MN (2018) and Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City (2018), Project Space Residency, Counterpulse, SF (2017) and grants from PLRAC, MN (2017), KU Spencer Museum, Lawrence, KS and Puffin, NJ and Theatre Bay Area, San Francisco, CA .

Leralee Whittle has been a guest teacher at Wayne State University, Performance Works NW and FLOCK, Portland, OR, Counterpulse, San Francisco, Sudstern Jam, Berlin, The Cowels Center, Minneapolis and more.