artist statement and biography

LAURA PETERSON

NYC-based dance artist creating works that challenge the limits of physicality and reframe performance spaces. Influenced by the visual art of the 1970’s, she simultaneously creates visually arresting installations and rigorous choreography. Her performances have included large scale paintings, 1000 sq ft of living lawn, 16ft tall paper sculptures, and other giant structures.

“Smart, severe, oddly moving work”
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice

“In Peterson’s visionary work, dancers
are never characters -- they're elements of a larger whole, which itself is a sign of some larger whole.”
 Tom Phillips, DanceViewTimes

selected performances

  • Museum of Modern Art exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done. - Judson Reassembled event in NYC

  • The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

  • Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors

  • Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Inside/Out

  • Teatro Cervantes  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • International Dance Festival Bytom, Poland

residencies

  • HERE Arts Center Artist Residency Program (HARP)

  • Bogliasco Fellowship and residency in Italy

  • Marble House Project

  • Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space
    at 14 Wall Street & Governors Island

  • Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning

  • Queens Museum of Art

  • Subcircle Residency

  • Dance New Amsterdam

commissions

  • Dixon Place (NYC) 

  • Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the River-To-River Festival

  • Dance New Amsterdam

  • Reflection:Response Commission : Temple University

  • Created two works for Nick Cave’s Sound Suits
    with Balance Dance Company and the Boise Art Museum

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an interdisciplinary artist working with choreography and installation art. Intended for midsize audiences of 50–350 people, my work explores the materiality of the body in relation to the physical world—objects and forces—as well as the intangible frameworks of history, politics, and society. My movement language, set on soloists or quartets of dancers, is abstract, dealing with pattern, time, line, shape, repetition, and space. I extend this ethos to the sculptural elements that also populate the stage. My recent work is concerned with the climate emergency and the devastating effects humans have on the environment. 

The recurring motif in all my work is an exploration of breakdown and limits and the inevitable disruption of order by chaos. I am drawn to the beauty and elegance of line, form, direction; the drama of watching those elements fall apart. I am fascinated by the monstrosity of human egos and desires and our Sisyphean striving against forces so much greater than we are. I find elegance in the exhaustion of a performer striving to fulfill an impossible task. 

The visual art movements of the 1970s, minimalism in particular, holds a particular fascination for me. I feel a strong desire for movement expressions that are extraordinarily clear and non-decorative. I seek to bypass complex anatomical detail by emphasizing strong lines and trajectories through space—aware that this is idealistic and that the complexities of biological, emotional, and intellectual natures will always win out.

awards

  • NYSCA Choreography Commission

  • Brooklyn Arts Council

  • Greenwall Foundation (multi-year support)

  • Trust for Mutual Understanding

  • Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation

  • Puffin Foundation

  • Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

repertory for dance companies

  • Pennsylvania Ballet

  • Hartford Ballet

  • Group Motion Dance Company

excerpts of three dances: SOLO, Failure, Interglacial