LAUREN RUNIONS

Lauren Runions (b. 1989) is a dance artist, choreographer, facilitator, and arts administrator based in Tkarón:to/Toronto and sometimes Kjipuktuk/Halifax. As a dancer, they have most recently worked with Susannah Haight, pounds per square inch performance/Gerry Trentham, Christopher Willes & Adam Kinner, SLOW DANCE LAB/Sally Morgan, Jacinte Armstrong, Mocean Dance, kloetzel&co./Melanie Kloetzel & Anandam Dancetheatre/Brandy Leary, Lisa Phinney, and New Mineral Collective.
 

For Lauren dancing involves moving-thinking, writing, choreographic objects, community labs, performances and daily independent practice. Their work investigates the role of choreography as a reciprocal spatial practice; and with deliberate movement experiments and staged interactions they begin to expand this notion through score-reading and -writing. Scores open possibility for improvisation, sounding, observing, walking, and tending to routine dailiness. Scores exalt presence and ways to be in dialogue-with material, beings, and place. Lauren’s work questions how social choreographies shape everyday embodied awareness and inform their responsibility to living with intersectional ecologies.

Lauren has choreographed site-specific works for MOCA, Nuit Blanche, Long Winter, Radiant Rural Halls, and Nocturne. They have acted as movement director for music videos in collaboration with Rachel Bobbitt, Fucked Up, The Weather Station, Alessia De Gasperis, Ian Daniel Kehoe, New Fries, and Jordan Hart. They are the artistic director of project I/O Movement which offers site-responsive performances, community workshops, and public residencies. In 2018, public dance residency This is Our Place was supported by The Bentway’s Community Incubation Program.
As community connection increasingly drives their practice, Lauren has hosted public workshops including Movement at the Mall (Art Starts), Dancing + Drawing, Mapping Inside/Outside (Gallery 1265), and Field Guide for Performance in Public Space (Maximum City); and they are on faculty at Dance Arts Institute. 

As an administrator, Lauren currently works with Toronto Dance Love-In and Ground UP Dance Festival, and has worked closely with Dreamwalker Dance. They have coordinated for Nuit Blanche Toronto and at Artscape Gibraltar Point. They adore supporting artists to present their work and facilitate their own emergent practices. Lauren is a graduate of George Brown College's Performance Dance program and holds an MFA from NSCAD University with Oslo National Academy of the Arts/KHiO.