Director's Bio

Prior to forming kdp, Lauren Winslow Kearns was the artistic director of bodytalk dance, a professional repertory dance company based in Los Angeles that toured from 1999-2005 and had consecutive seasons at Highways Performance Space, a national performance network venue. Kearns has choreographed over forty professionally produced dance pieces both nationally and internationally. Her work has been co-produced by: Highways Performance Space; NC Dance Festival; NY Dance on Camera Festival; Changshu,China City Government; Brand Library Dance Series; Spectrum Dance Series; Dance Under the Stars Festival; L.A. County Arts Open House; Caught Between: Dancing for Camera & Live Audience; Festival of New Dance and Performance; Haugh Performing Arts Center; California Choreographers Festival; Dance Moving Forward Festival; and the Fountain Theatre Festival of Solos and Duets. Everywhere I Look, her 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, Lincoln Center, New York, New York. 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 SAG card for principal work in a national commercial.

Kearns has received twenty-four grants, fellowships and awards to support her artistic and scholarly projects with the most recent being the 2008 NC Dance Alliance Choreography Fellowship to support the creation of I Live Here. At Elon University, she received a 2008 Professional Summer Development Grant for Advanced Yoga Body Science, a 2007 CATL grant for Deepening the Somatic Experience, a 2006-2007 Hultquist Stipend and a 2006-2007 Faculty Research and Development Grant to pursue her somatic research in Advanced Yoga Body Science and it’s application to dance performance and creative training. 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 and the American College Dance Festival.

In addition to her choreographic and performance career, Kearns is an Assistant Professor of Dance, the Coordinator of the Dance Program and the architect of the B.F.A. degree in Dance Performance and Choreography at Elon University. 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 multi-media in contemporary dance. Prior to her appointment at Elon University, she was a tenured faculty member and the Director of Dance at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, CA from 1999 - 2006. She was credited with designing and implementing the program’s comprehensive lower-division dance and somatics curriculum.

Kearns was recently elected to serve 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 teacher and presenter at the American College Dance Festival since 2000. Kearns also is serving a two-year term on the Board of Directors for the NC Dance Alliance.

Kearns has an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance and an M.A. in Dance Education and Theory from UCLA and a B.A. in Theatre Arts with a specialization in Dance from Long Island University. She holds national certifications in Vinyasa Flow Yoga, Classical Pilates and is currently working on her master certification in Alignment Based Hatha Yoga.