Elizabeth Ginsburg

BRISTOL, Vt. - Elizabeth Ginsburg, 76, artist, teacher, a resident of Lee, N.H., from 1972 to 2003, and for many years an instructor of modern dance at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., died peacefully at home on Thursday, September 29, 2016, in Bristol, Vt.

Liz was passionate about dance and performance, and in New Hampshire she founded two dance companies: Synergy, for modern dance and improvisational dance; and Dance Revival, a performance company for Renaissance court dance. Collaborating with Meredyth Jones and Persis Ensor, she also directed or co-directed several major community productions, including Purcell and Dryden's English opera King Arthur; Shaker Spirit, a production of Shaker singing and dance; and An Elizabethan Feaste, featuring music, dance, drama, and food of the Shakespearean era, in which she also performed the role of Queen Elizabeth I.

Liz thrilled to travel and loved learning about other cultures. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines in the early 1960's, lived for a year each in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and spent a year and a half in Japan, where she was a visiting lecturer in English at Kobe Shoin Women's University.

She earned her bachelor's degree in dance and physical education from the University of Missouri, where she was the champion woman golfer and was awarded Best All-Around Female Athlete. Her Master of Arts in Teaching from Rhode Island College focused on Anthropology and Sociology. She had wide intellectual, cultural, and artistic interests. After she retired from teaching dance, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and painting, Summa cum laude, from the University of New Hampshire at age 56. Her senior project honoring her mother, Dorothy (Sappington) Holsinger, became a one-woman show at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri.

In 2007, Liz suffered significant right hemisphere brain damage from a ruptured aneurism and was no longer able to continue her work. But her injury did not dampen her intense love for her family, and she enthusiastically enjoyed talking with people, reading, and attending musical performances.

Liz will be remembered for her creativity, her commitment to the arts, her warmth toward strangers, her intense love of family, and her vibrant spirit.

Survivors include her husband, Karl Diller of Bristol, Vt., Professor Emeritus of the University of New Hampshire; son Adam Ginsburg of Bristol, Vt., his wife Kristen, and their daughters Eden and Eliana; son Matthew Ginsburg of North Andover, Mass., his wife Melissa, and their children Caleb and Cecilia; step-son John Diller of Oakland, Calif., and his wife Melissa Levine; step-son David Diller of Northwood, N.H.; Liz's former husband Philip Ginsburg and his wife Carolyn Anderson of Newmarket, N.H., and god-daughter Sonia Ginsburg of San Francisco, Calif.; three brothers Michael, David and Mark Holsinger; a sister, Anne Tavel, and several nieces and nephews.