Lauren Linder (she/her) is a dance artist originally from Muncie, Indiana. Lauren has choreographed, performed, and taught dance in Seattle, Washington and Iowa City, Iowa.

Lauren’s choreographic research investigates the relationship between stability and ephemerality as it relates to the dancing body, the written word, and the archive. Through attention to softness, syntax, girlhood, gesture and athleticism Lauren’s work problematizes hierarchies of form and traces relational ambiguities. Lauren’s research interests also encompass compositional improvisation, devised dance theater, the discursive connections between dancing, writing, and femininity, score building, and inclusivity and accessibility in dance spaces.

In the Midwest, Lauren danced for and collaborated with Stephanie Miracle, Melinda Jean Myers, Sean Thomas Boyt, Brady Van Patten, and Sophia McLaughlin on site-based work, dance theater work, and dance films. In Seattle, Washington, Lauren had the pleasure to perform with the Pat Graney Company, Veronica Lee-Baik, Alice Gosti, Petra Zanki, Hope Goldman, and Alyza DelPan-Monley among others.

Lauren’s choreography has been shown at the Color Club (Chicago, IL), the Iron Factory (Philadelphia, PA), the Erickson Theater (Seattle, WA), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle, WA), On the Boards Open Studio (Seattle, WA), The Epic Center (Kalamazoo, MI), the JewelBox Theater (Seattle, WA), the Green House (Iowa City, IA), Space Place Theater (Iowa City, IA), the Voxman Music Building (Iowa City, IA), the Visual Arts Building (Iowa City, IA), and Arts Building West (Iowa City, IA). Her work The Beginnings of an Emergent Truth About Whipped Cream received a Dance Crush Award from Seattle Dances.

Lauren holds an MFA in Dance and an MA in Multilingual Education from the University of Iowa. Currently, Lauren is a dance teaching artist with the UI Youth Ballet and the Director of Combined Efforts Dance, a dance company that facilitates purposeful collaboration between artists with and without intellectual disabilities.