[2] Lisa Nelson began her training in traditional modern dance and ballet as a child at the Juilliard School in New York City and then Bennington College in Vermont.
[2] In 1973, she began a ten year investigation of video and dance from which she developed an approach to spontaneous composition and performance under the name Tuning Scores.
Beginning in 1974, she took part, along with dancers Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the early evolution of contact improvisation, and was a crucial observer of its development through her work with video.
Throughout the 1990s, in collaboration with K. J. Holmes, Karen Nelson[4] and Scott Smith, she developed the ensemble structure of the Tuning Scores, that she teaches internationally.
[5] She is recognized for her editorial and journalistic contributions on dance and improvisation and is the co-editor of the bi-annual dancer's journal Contact Quarterly.