After their partnership ended, due to artistic differences, she made a series of films and solo live works, Survival Tactics for the Anarchic Dancer, The English Channel, Slap and Tickle and Crone Alone.

Liz Aggiss was born in Nannygoats Commons, Dagenham, Essex and grew up in nearby Upminster, which she later described as 'a bleak English suburb during post war austerity.

J King in the Morning Star wondered 'whether or not all that hilarious jumping and swaying with feet tied together really qualifies as dance....It was certainly movement of a highly entertaining kind, to be remembered with gratitude by a critic so often threatened with drowning in a sea of self-indulgence, pretentiousness and insipidity.

Wearing the uniform of a German gymnast, Aggiss, in a single spotlight, performed a series of short expressionist vignettes accompanied by cabaret-style songs, instrumentals and poems.

"[3] The show was reconstructed at the Purcell Room on London's South Bank, on 9 April 1999, with live musical accompaniment from Cowie (piano) and Gerard McChrystal (saxophone).

Looking back in 1993, Sophie Constanti described Divas as a 'crew of besuited, stiletto wearing Brighton women, whose otherwise unconventional appearance was intensified by the scowling, hard-edge non-conformity of Aggiss’s brand of movement theatre.

'[21] In 1988, Aggiss and Cowie created Die Orchidee im Plastik Karton, premiered by 13 dance students at the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education (now University College Chichester), and later performed by Divas, at the Zap in 1989.

[22] The phrases included 'InterCity is the train for men,' and 'The orchid in the plastic carton is the flower for ladies'[23] Julia Pascal in her Guardian review wrote that 'Movement is staccato, grotesque and funny.

Dann Geht sie Einkaufen – Hausfrau und Mutter (then she goes shopping housewife and mother) is a woman in a crab position walking backwards and forwards on palms and feet; the endless repetitive work action delivered dead pan was answered with female laughs of recognition.

This was a bridal dance performed, on the front apron of the stage, by seven androgynous brides dressed in slate grey satin, who become 'a nightmare anarchic anti-chorus line.

'[28] Allen Robertson in Time Out wrote, "Your response to the bitter, bizarre bridal dance 'Dead Steps' will depend on your tolerance for deliberately ugly cabaret pastiche with an S&M undercurrent.

Clad in metallic floor length gowns with kohl eyes, white faces and mouths like red scars, the dancers perform either in unison distortions or anti-erotic displays of the flesh.

'[7] In 1992, Holger revived four dances for Aggiss from her repertoire: Die Forelle (The Trout) (1923), Le Martyre de San Sebastien (1923), Mechaniches Ballett (1926) and Golem (1937).

[31] Sophie Constanti wrote that 'Together all four pieces danced with great sensitivity and aplomb by Aggiss accompanied by Cowie on piano provided a fascinating insight into the lost Ausdruckstanz of central Europe.

'[35] The show was then taken to France, where it was reviewed by Sylvie Sueron: 'Margaret Thatcher is minced up; her gestures, her sayings are deconstructed in self contained sections....Five dancers in strict suits and black stillettos bring to life the authentic stroboscopic qualities of a grating English prime minister.

Deborah Levy wrote that 'Cowie's extremely skilled text works with Aggiss's dynamic performing presence with complete synergy; in fact, Absurditties is a small masterpiece that resonates long after the show has finished.

Philip Beaven, in his report on the symposium, confessed, 'It took me a while to realise that this was a beautifully fabricated parody of our desire to create icons from the past (complete with original film clips from 1904!

Sebastian Gonzales recalls beloved Spanish customs with tension and flair, Anglo-Asian Jeddi Bassan wimpers and pompously prattles while American Scott Smith is casual and crumpled – a soft and sensitive post-beatnik.

It included essays by Aggiss, Cowie, Donald Hutera, Sondra Fraleigh, Sherril Dodds, Claudia Kappenberg, Marion Kant, Valeria A.Briginshaw, Deborah Levy and Carol Brown.

Jana Návratová, the Czech dance critic, described the impact: 'During the interval or before the performance, when people usually shift in their seats switching off cells and finishing sandwiches, she stepped onto the scene and speaking through a megaphone claimed our attention.

Dorothy Max Prior in Total Theatre described the film as 'a very artful and cunning mix of staged set-pieces and real-life action, so deftly edited that unless you are in the know and spot the performers, it is hard to distinguish the plants from the real-live city folk.... in tandem with Joe Murray, she moves away from Expressionism into a crisper and sharper Hyperrealism.

'I don’t have an ounce of lyricism in me' she says, explaining why she turned to kohl-eyed, grotesquely-costumed Expressionism at a time (the 1980s) when most other contemporary dancers were dressed in grey sweatpants and exploring Somatic Practice or Contact Improvisation.

Often, the performer’s body is deconstructed or distorted or extended by what she is wearing: a black penitent’s shroud covers her head, but exposes her legs, making her look like a mini-skirted Ku Klux Klan member; an enormous metal claw with excessively long fingers weaves through the air, both menacing and mesmeric (referencing Kay Lynn’s Finger Dance); her Max Wall bulging bottom channels the Bouffon, looking down at the world and laughing.

In an interview she described it as 'a show of opposites; slap and tickle, punishment reward, push and pull'[57] Aggiss alternately 'slapped' the audience, taking them into dark areas, and then 'tickled' them with comic material ('Come on everybody!

'[65] In SeeingDance, Matthew Paluch wrote: 'Aggiss offers spoken word verging on rap, balletic interludes and jerky movement phrases, all encompassed within a very long, drawn-out strip tease of sorts.

'[66] Sanjoy Roy in the Guardian wrote: 'Opening its first evening was Liz Aggiss, dubbed the “enfant terrible of the bus pass generation” in the programme note, whose inimitable presence – equal parts Weimar cabaret host, dada dancer, rogue feminist and end-of-pier prankster – feels as fresh now as it did when she started out four decades ago.

She peels those off too, revealing successive layers of vests and undies that release various abject objects....In between, she recalls critical reactions to her early shows, cranks her limbs into puppetty jerks, rants and raps to club and rock rhythms, air-guitars her fingers in front of her crotch.

'[68] Aggiss's second work for MapDance, Cut with the Kitchen Knife (2014), referenced the photomontages of Hannah Höch, the stop frame animations of Edweard Muybridge, Gertrud Bodenwieser's Demon Machine, and the 1933 Hollywood musical Roman Scandals.

It was a piece which 'dumps age centre stage and kicks preconceptions into the long grass....Her performers, with handbags on their heads, become a radical army of spirited individuals calling for the overturn of institutional myopia.

The course produced several 'fascinating independent artists',[74] including Ian Smith, Louise Rennison, Ralf D'Arcy Higgins, Virginia Farman, Marisa Carnesky and Miriam King, who all performed in Aggiss and Cowie's shows, and Anne Seagrave, Lizzy Le Quesne, Silke Mansholt, Michael Pinsky, Nikki Ward, Esther Rollinson, Miranda Henderson, Marc Rees, George Chakravarthi, Chris Umney and Magali Charrier.