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Faculty Prior to forming kdp, Kearns was the director of bodytalk dance, a professional repertory company based in Los Angeles that toured from 1999-2005, and she spent consecutive seasons at Highways Performance Space, a national performance network venue. She has choregraphed more than 40 professionally produced dance pieces nationally and internationally. Her work has been produced by Highways Performance Space; the North Carolina Dance Festival; New York Dance on Camera Festival; Changshu, China, city government; Brand Library Dance Series; Spectrum Dance Series' Dance Under the Stars Festival; Los Angeles County Arts open House; Caught Between: Dancing for Camera and Live Audience; Festival of New Dance and Performance; Haugh Performing Arts Center; California Choreographers Festival; Dance Moving Forward Festival; and Fountain Theatre Festival of Solos and Duets. Kearns' most recent piece, I Live Here, is a multimedia collaboration with media artist J. McMerty and set designer Bill Webb, both of Elon. Watch promos and a variety of documentaries about I Live Here. Everywhere I Look, Kearns' second dance video, is part of the permanent collection at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in New York City. As a performer, Kearns danced in the works of New York choreographers Cara Gargano, Cathy Zimmerman, Deborah Glaser and Janis Brenner, and Los Angeles choreographers Kiha Lee and Ming NG. She received her Screen Actors Guild card for her principal work in a national commercial. Kearns has received 25 grants, fellowships and awards to support her artistic and scholarly projects, the most recent being the 2008-09 Elon Fund for Excellence in the Arts and Sciences and the 2008 North Carolina Dance Alliance Choreography Fellowship to support the creation of I Live Here. At Elon, she received a 2007 grant from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning to develop Deepening the Somatic Experience; a 2006-07 Hultquist Stipend and a 2006-07 Faculty Research and Development Grant to pursue her somatic research in Advanced Yoga Body Science and its application to dance performance and creative training. She currently is working on a series of articles about her somatic research. In 2004, Kearns received the California Community College Dance Educator of the Year Award for her contribution to Rio Hondo College, and in 2003, she received grants from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Durfee Foundation to incorporate the use of video in her choreography. She has presented her scholarly and creative research at the National Dance Education Organization Conference (2008, 2009) and the American College Dance Festival (2000-present). Kearns is currently serving a three-year term on the National Board of Directors of the American College Dance Festival Association representing the mid-Atlantic region. She has been a guest lecturer and presenter at the American College Dance Festival since 2000. Kearns also is serving a two-year term on the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Dance Alliance. Kearns holds an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance and an M.A. in Dance Education and Theory from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a specialization in Dance from Long Island University. She holds certifications in Vinyasa Flow Yoga, Alignment Based Hatha Yoga, and Classical Pilates. She is a registered teacher with the Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level and is a member of the Pilates Method Alliance. |
Lauren Winslow Kearns is an Assistant Professor of Dance, the Coordinator of the Dance Program and the architect of the BFA degree in Dance Performance and Choreography at Elon. Her research interests include the application of somatic theories to dance training and performance, the creative and aesthetic implications of somatic practices, and the utilization of autobiography and multimedia in contemporary dance. Kearns teaches Senior Seminar in Dance, Modern III-VI, Choregraphy I-II, Somatic Theories I-II, Special Topics in Dance, and mentors undergraduate research. Prior to her appointment at Elon, she was a tenured faculty member and Director of Dance at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, Calif., from 1999-2006. She taught all levels of modern, ballet, jazz, yoga, production and choreography, and was credited with designing and implementing the program's comprehensive lower-division dance and somatics curriculum.