Lauren Winslow Kearns is a tenured Associate Professor of Dance, the Head of the Dance Program and the architect of the BFA degree in Dance Performance and Choreography at Elon. She is a choreographer and artist scholar. 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. Her creative research focuses on choreographing dynamic and athletic concert dance, screendance, and multimedia theatrical events. She has published her somatic research in the Journal of Dance Education. Kearns most recently worked with Emmy Nominated Director Douglas Rosenberg in selecting American Dance Festival's 16th Annual International Screendance Festival.
Kearns teaches Senior Seminar in Dance, Modern III-VI, Choregraphy I-II, Somatic Theories I-II, Special Topics in Dance, Advanced Yoga, Theory and Philosophy, and mentors undergraduate creative research. She is also the director of the Elon Dance Company, the university's pre-professional dance company. Prior to her appointment at Elon, she was a tenured faculty member and Director of Dance at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, California 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.
In addition to her academic career, Kearns is artistic director of the kearns dance project, a professional, project-oriented dance company focusing on dynamic concert dance, screendance and multimedia theatrical events. The company premiered at the 2007 American Dance Festival Acts to Follow Series and has been actively touring the Southeast Region since. The company was invited to perform Kearns' original duet Swinging on a Bench for the 20th anniversary season of the 2010-2011 NC Dance Festival Tour. The company was most recently invited to perform Double Play, a new duet, in Movement Research's Open Performance Fall/Winter 2011-2012 Season in NYC.
Prior to forming kearns dance project, 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 46 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, End Game (2011) featured original music by Los Angeles based composer David Karagianis, video images by J. McMerty, and award winning lighting design by recent Elon alumn Daniel HIgginbotham. Please visit kearns dance project to view video excerpts of the piece. Kearns' 2009 piece, I Live Here was 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 (2004), 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 over 26 grants, fellowships and awards to support her artistic and scholarly projects, the most recent being the 2010-2011 Elon Fund for Excellence in the Arts and Sciences for the creation and generation of EndGame. She received 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. Kearns has also 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 and is the Regional Director-Elect. She will assume those duties in October, 2011. Kearns has been a guest lecturer and presenter at the American College Dance Festival since 2000. She coordinated the NC Dance Alliance Annual Conference September 10-11, 2010 and the American College Dance Festival Conference March 23-26, 2011. Both conferences were held at Elon University.
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. Kearns is a registered teacher with the Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level and is a member of the Pilates Method Alliance. She also directs kearns yoga & pilates a somatic-based training program that provides private instruction in yoga and pilates as well as pilates certification.
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