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ABOUT

LAURA

CARELESS

"A marvelously sensual dramatic dancer."

- The New York Times

"Continually one of the most interesting and dramatically detailed dancers on New York's stages."

- BroadwayWorld.com

Movement is my first language. I began dancing at the age of two, first in my baby bouncer, then without, and eventually in classes where there was less danger of breaking furniture. Dancing was both the way I learned who I was, and the best way I knew to communicate with others. 

 

From age 11-16, I attended The Royal Ballet School as a full-time, boarding student. There, my love affair with movement was gradually eclipsed by the desire to please my teachers and to become the perfect paintbrush for the creative instincts of a choreographer. In my college years as a student of the Juilliard Dance Division, I studied a wider range of dance techniques in a multi-disciplinary environment. While this broadened my physical repertoire and renewed my faith in the expressive power of movement, my sense of accomplishment in my dancing remained dependent on external markers: technical proficiency, body image, economical sustainability, even my ability to justify the very existence of the art I love to myself and to others. These markers were moving targets, and I was easily jaded, always exhausted, and heading into a 'creative' profession without any connection with my own creative life. My body was a slave to my own expectations, and the expectations that I thought other people had for me.

 

Sound familiar? You're in good company. My decade of professional experience has brought me into contact with performers and creators across the arts spectrum. From pianists to aerialists, opera singers to burlesque artists, the hot topic remains the same: how might I apply my creative instincts and skills to my OWN life? 

 

My performance career, with the marvelous Company XIV and now increasingly in my own work, represents a gradual reconnection with the animal instincts that sent me twirling in the first place. I have found that once you have cultivated a mature relationship with the raw material of your own being - the PRIMA MATERIA for your unique brand of alchemy - a new style of physical intelligence emerges. These are the instincts of a mature animal, ripe for circulation with conscious intentions and creative ideas. Nowadays, I recognize that all my best and most effective decisions involve my body, and I love to consult it on and off stage as a source of confidence, desire, authenticity and fun. To find out more about what I'm up to nowadays, including a video gallery, please visit www.lauracareless.com.

 

In addition to performing, I have been on faculty at the New York Public School for Dance since 2008 and have served as Rehearsal Director/Assistant Choreographer for Company XIV Director Austin McCormick for nearly a decade. I have had the pleasure of coaching performers at Company XIV, Canadian Opera Company, Theatre For A New Audience, The Donmar Warehouse (UK), Venture Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, the Juilliard School and Circus Juventas, in addition to individualized coaching with singers, instrumentalists and actors as well as dancers.

 

Now, it's your turn. It would be my pleasure and my passion to share with you my maps for connections between our physicality, our reactions, our feelings and our intentions, and to watch you put your PRIMA MATERIA to magical use. 

VIDEO //

LOST GODDESS 

 

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