Lauren is a multidisciplinary artist: a dancer, photographer, and musician, with a heart for community, healing, and transformation. She has been a photographer for 15 years, expanding into community and nonprofit work founding an artistic community in Charlottesville, VA and serving as community director (The Farm House 2015-2022) and has danced and trained with companies and collectives from coast to coast.
She began dancing at a young age, and later trained and danced with Inlet Dance Theatre in Cleveland, OH (Erik Hawkins Modern Release Technique; Improvisation [Liz Lerman] and Non-Traditional Partnering), former collaborator and dancer with Elu Dance Company and has worked alongside dance therapists, inner healing prayer ministers and trauma survivors to release healing through dance. She has led and traveled with dancers and projects around the world, choreographing works to benefit nonprofit organizations and bring awareness to human rights issues. Having experienced her own levels of healing and freedom through dance, she hopes to share that with others through her created pieces, collaborative works, and movement workshops.
I am stepping out in new ways with my dance offerings and upcoming collaborations. I have been in the dance studio the past few months, preparing to release a live dance performance at The Breath and the Clay, March 22-24, collaborating with two fellow dancers, Whitney Hancock and Gabrielle Miller, and musicians, Stephen Roach, William Johnson, Luke Skaggs. This is a declarative, structured improvisation piece called, Elephant Wells.
I have also developed a new workshop, Movement as Prayer, that I released at the conference with 40+ attendees. This workshop is the first of many that I have in development, all collaborative in nature, story-based, and many trauma-informed. I will use these workshops as the upcoming foundation of new dance works and collective dance company (The Freedom Project) in different regions I will be traveling to in the US, with new material already being created with dancers and filmmakers in spring 2024. *You can bring me to your city or region by applying to host a workshop!
I am beginning a 6-week class series born from the workshop, Movement as Prayer, being held here in Lynchburg, Virginia spring 2024 at Live Move Be Studio. You can sign up for the class below (limited space).