Choreographer & Artist-Engineer

Dance combines Laurel's loves of athleticism and art. The trademarks of her work are storytelling and highly physical partnering and ensemble movement; she draws upon mythology and archetype to underpin her work with deep resonance. Working with both nondisabled (conventional) and disabled or physically-integrated companies, she creates works which entice the audience into the worlds and stories she crafts.

Laurel began her dance career with Full Radius Dance in 2004 and is currently part of the disabled artists’ collective Kinetic Light, where in addition to choreographic collaboration and performance in such award-winning works as DESCENT, Wired, and Under Momentum she contributes production design, leads technical research and development, and leads access innovation including the Audimance project and the Access ALLways initiative.

Working as an artist-engineer and in transdisciplinary media, Laurel focuses on the research and development of novel software and hardware designs which facilitate immersive multi-sensory experiences. Grounded in an understanding that the body is the ultimate instrument of knowledge, their work explores ways in which multi-channel aesthetic implementations create impactful and equitable experiences.

Her work in wheelchair design can be viewed in an ongoing design archive, TRUE, as well as the latest iterations in the chairs she uses in performance. She researches and writes on technique and aesthetics, access and equity, and topics currently in her writing queue are artistic haptics,, neurodiverse hospitality, and wheelchair design, seating, and strapping for dancers.

The Choreodaemonic Platform, a new collaborative project co-led by Laurel and Sydney Skybetter, is a multiply-manifesting, choreo-computational performance for artists, audiences, and AI: inviting us to consider the deliberate, inevitable, and unpredictable ways we shape the world around us and are ourselves shaped in turn. This project is gathering collaborators and supporters in art and technology -- AI ethics, surveillance, environmental change, sociocultural evolution, and more -- through a series of residencies. Reach out if you are interested in getting involved.