is a dancer-choreographer and a movement teacher who has been working in and influencing the Finnish dance scene since 1987. She graduated 1986 from the School of New Dance Development in Amsterdam and has since created work that has been presented in Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Hungary and Russia. Altogether she has made over twenty-five pieces including group and solo work, and choreographies for theatre plays. Her studies at the School for New Dance Development in mid 80's created a base for her dance aesthetics. The curriculum of the school included at that time release -alignment work, contact improvisation and body mind centering, as well as regular improvisation classes. Her main teachers, Julyen Hamilton and Pauline de Groot, were teaching technique classes in which they fused their own curiosity and explorative mind with the more traditional frame of Cunningham and Hawkins. Some of the guest teachers at school were artists like Simone Forti, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Mary Fulkerson and Nancy Strak-Smith. With this legacy, Liisa returned to Finland in 1987 and has since been creating her own work. In 2000 she founded her own company Liisa Pentti + Co.In her work she searches for possible correlations between the bodily and narrative expression, and she works with the shifts between emotion, sensation and movement. Her style has been defined as eclectic as she draws impressions from many sources including notably texts and the onomatopoetic and emotional aspects of language.

Together with three colleagues she established Zodiak-Center for New Dance in Helsinki in 1997. In 2005, Zodiak was nominated as one of the four major choreographic centers in Finland. Liisa Pentti serves on the artistic board and is on the artistic team organizing the bi-annual Sidestep-Festival at Zodiak.

As a teacher she has worked in Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania. In her teaching she combines image work and different body techniques. Liisa Pentti has been teaching movement for actors since 1990 at the Swedish Drama Department in the Theatre Academy of Helsinki and has created ways to adapt body work and contact improvisation to the specific needs of the actors movement training.

Liisa Pentti's residency at PACT Zollverein is supported by Ministerium für Städtebau und Wohnen, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.