Lauren Jenkins - Dance artist
About
Lauren is a dance artist intrigued by the possibilities of communication through movement.
She began her dance training at The BRIT School specialising in performing arts. After this, she trained at The Place on the BA (hons) course studying contemporary dance. Deciding to explore her practice further she then completed an MA on the postgraduate course EDGE there in 2021.
Since graduating Lauren has been freelancing as a performer, choreographer and teacher in the UK, working on a range of projects including; Enroute - Luca Silvistrini’s Protein, Starving Dingoes - Lea Tirabasso, Chicken Teriyaki - Holly Blakey X Rosalia, Leaders of a New Regime - Corey Baker X United Nations X Nowness X Cop26 and The 2022 Common Wealth opening ceremony.
Lauren is a dance artist intrigued by the possibilities of communication through movement.
She began her dance training at The BRIT School specialising in performing arts. After this, she trained at The Place on the BA (hons) course studying contemporary dance. Deciding to explore her practice further she then completed an MA on the postgraduate course EDGE there in 2021.
Since graduating Lauren has been freelancing as a performer, choreographer and teacher in the UK, working on a range of projects including; Enroute - Luca Silvistrini’s Protein, Starving Dingoes - Lea Tirabasso, Chicken Teriyaki - Holly Blakey X Rosalia, Leaders of a New Regime - Corey Baker X United Nations X Nowness X Cop26 and The 2022 Common Wealth opening ceremony.
Artistic vision:
Dance connects through a web of movement, suggestions and references. It allows us to explore our ideas through physicalities, letting the body explore and communicate these thoughts for both an audience and self. As a creative practitioner Lauren looks to welcome the students into her current explorations, allowing space for a creative exchange and growth in artistic discovery.
Lauren wishes to explore the crossroads of tradition and innovation, looking at the culture of communication in the digital age and how advancements in technology affect our day to day living within a societal context. This will allow the group to reflect on both the damaging effects and endless possibilities that technologies give us. Lauren looks to use a range of mediums to both inspire movement and craft the environment the piece will be held and viewed in. For instance using; creative writing, soundscapes, crafting, drawing, film, lighting etc. Together they will curate an accumulation of references in which their message will be explored; not to work towards a finished, polished work but an ongoing investigation, installation and archive of research. Merging movement, data, and imagination in the creation of their own wide web of information.
Dance connects through a web of movement, suggestions and references. It allows us to explore our ideas through physicalities, letting the body explore and communicate these thoughts for both an audience and self. As a creative practitioner Lauren looks to welcome the students into her current explorations, allowing space for a creative exchange and growth in artistic discovery.
Lauren wishes to explore the crossroads of tradition and innovation, looking at the culture of communication in the digital age and how advancements in technology affect our day to day living within a societal context. This will allow the group to reflect on both the damaging effects and endless possibilities that technologies give us. Lauren looks to use a range of mediums to both inspire movement and craft the environment the piece will be held and viewed in. For instance using; creative writing, soundscapes, crafting, drawing, film, lighting etc. Together they will curate an accumulation of references in which their message will be explored; not to work towards a finished, polished work but an ongoing investigation, installation and archive of research. Merging movement, data, and imagination in the creation of their own wide web of information.
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Previous projects:
DIN: DIN stemmed from Lauren’s critical synopsis of surveillance and how it affects a developing dance artist within the digital age. During this research she focused on how combining critical and normative aspects of surveillance in practice may advance individual artistry. To give an example of the importance of surveillance art she curated / choreographed DIN, a short dance film covering all things surveilled. This digital performance, ‘DIN’, is a collaboration of; herself as choreographer/producer, director Laura Roe, cinematographer Bart Bazaz, costume designer Amber Badham, composer Joanna Ward and the five performers Delilah Grocott Cain, James Healy, Miles Kearly, Mette Nilsen and Sabrina Wong. The film was titled 'DIN', meaning a constant sound. They found this hinted at the endless fabrication of surveillance in society, ‘Unlike the centralized power of mass society, there is no escape from Big Other. There is no place to be where the Other is not.’ (Zuboff, 2015, p. 82) |
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Overall, DIN outlines how developing dance artists can take responsibility to critique surveillance through their own medium, using art as a context to breed hope, remix the typical, subvert the form and transform the expected.
Interview with Lauren by Natasha Lyons yr. 13 artist
Natasha: How old are you/ where are you from?
Lauren: I am twenty-four and I am from south-east London. I currently live in south-east London, and I grew up here as well.
Natasha: what inspired you to become an artist / when did you first aspire to be one?
Lauren: I think I fell into becoming an artist and I didn’t really know what that meant until perhaps I graduated from university so my vocational training at the place, I did for four years. Being an artist, I think you can just be quite naïve to the fact that the things that your making is considered art, especially for myself as a dance artist. I think there is an emphasis on training performing learning and not so much on creating, cognitive thinking and expanding your knowledge and your work. Maybe perhaps that’s because I danced from a young age.
From the age of three, I started taking dance lessons in a range of styles ballet, tap, modern, jazz, contemporary, and I then went to the brits' school for collage so for two years studying all different styles of dance again. And then went on to study for three years BA at London contemporary dance school. At the place for my BA, I started to maybe open my mind a little bit more to creating and being inspired by mainly my peers, but I don’t think I had the confidence yet to feel like I was worthy to create. Then I think from graduating in the pandemic and having a bit of time out I started to really hone in on what I was inspired by and what I enjoyed. And I think creating was a big part of that and is also a hub where you can connect with different ideas and the world and thoughts. Especially when there is a lot going on politically and in terms of advancements in lots of different forms.
I then did an extra year at the place. I did an MA course called “Edge” which was a post graduate study and acted as a post graduate company. Within this year I think that I built up a lot of confidence and let go of a lot of things that were holding me back, and this was the year I really started to create and collaborate with peers on a different course called “Screen dance”. I then created my project called “DIN” and this was a short dance film based on my studies on advancements in technology and surveillance. “DIN” was a collaboration of myself as the creator and choreographer a little bit of producing as well. It was Laura Roe (also known as Margo Roe) who was the director, DOP (director of picture) Bart Bazaz who was the cinematographer, there was also Joanna Ward who was the composer and Amber ward who was designing and creating the costumes.
This was my first experience creating a work and collaborating with that many people. It was quite ambitious because I was still studying and working towards various performances as a dancer and a performer. And I was overwhelmed but also focused and kind of accelerated by the aspects of creating and finding things within this collaboration that I haven’t found before. It just seemed like there were endless possibilities and within the time restriction we had and the deadline we created something I was really proud of.
Natasha: What made you want to carry on as an artist?
Lauren: I think from this initial project and collaboration, I realized that creating didn’t always have to be a final product and the power within being able to share ideas and thoughts and promote conversations around something rather than just having a statement. I think creating art allows me to work through ideas myself but also allow this to translate to an audience and allow them to create their own opinions about a certain subject. It's not about trying to make people think in a certain way, it's about having a seed of an idea, thoughts, research and communicating this through my art film which is dance. I really enjoy collaborating and I think that this is something that inspires me because working with different mediums within movement allows me to have more possibilities within the art form. And I think it’s a beautiful thing to be able to express thought and words in a physical form or a visual form because I feel like sometimes emotions, ideas, and thoughts exceed words, so it allows me to be able to express or translate ideas that maybe ideas words cannot.
Natasha: What specific art mediums do you work with currently and is there any others you want to try?
Lauren: Well at the moment, I work mainly with movement with movement and, I'm really fortunate that movement can translate to a lot of things and relate to a lot of people as it's something we do in everyday life. I try and use movement both in a pedestrian manner and also, in a more technical manner depending on what project I'm working on and who I’m working with, who I'm trying to reach out to, relate to, and what I'm trying to translate to an audience or a group of people. I think that there are so many possibilities within movement and whether that’s in a gestural sense, how we communicate through body language or just everyday movements that we naturally as an instinct do.
I think there's so much research on movement that the possibilities are endless, but I like to play with different environments. You can be sight specific, so work with an environment that you feel like says something to you and mold the movement and create within that space. It’s a lot of research on phenomenology, that’s super interesting and I definitely want to read up a little bit more that and, in the future, try and work a little bit more sight specifically. Especially to be able to give access to the community more and bridge the gap between art and the everyday person. I also use just creative writing, abstract writing, research a lot and academic works. I try and use film and I’d like to expand my knowledge on film, but I work a lot with as I mentioned before, Margo Roe and Bart Bazaz who have a lot more knowledge on this aspect so sometimes it's great to be able to put your guard down and say this isn’t my field but I know someone who I can really learn from and learn with.
In addition to this, my current research is on advancements on technology so whether that is a medium I am unsure, but I am trying to work within this field to try and keep up with advancements in our digital age and translate my artistry on to something that is a little bit beyond me, which I'm still working out, but that is the aim for this year.
Natasha: How do you think your work has progressed overtime?
Lauren: I feel like my work over the last few years has gained more confidence and has become a bit more full bodied in terms of self-assurance and I think it's natural to have doubts within your work and to never get past a researching stage. I have had so many thoughts and ideas I'll want to follow through, but never got the chance to make them into a body of work. So, I am trying to really commit to ideas no matter how small or large and no matter what scale I want them to be seen on. I think there is a freedom in this, and I am just trying to be a little bit more open minded in terms of the work that I generate and not as strict in what form it comes out in. I think that overtime it has progressed in terms of how specific I am to an area of research and how open I am to others feeding into this research.
Natasha: Is there something specific that you want to challenge through your work?
Lauren: I think being a dance artist, choreogropher, performer, I aim to create work and allow others to create work to connect in general, connect to other people to refashion thoughts, connect to the environment, connect to emotions. I think connecting and relating and allowing someone to see something of themselves or something of their own experience within your work is really important. And to have a reaction, no matter what this reaction is no matter if it’s positive or negative I think is important. So, creating something that is vulnerable and open and as real as possible or trying to get to the aspect of the human experience within a work and I, at the moment am researching technology and we are looking at the digital, the online. So how do the students that I am working with really feel about this topic and how honest can they be about their feelings and then, how can I try and scope this or mold this into some body of work that can be seen by an outside audience and in a physical form to allow them to think about their own experiences. I think that mainly I want to challenge how much relflection you can have and what you can feel rather than a specific element. I think I'm quite open to letting that happen not planning ahead too much and letting natural things occur within the work.
Natasha: What did you think of my workshop inspired by your project?
Lauren: I really enjoyed your workshop Natasha. I felt like there was a direct correleation and relationship between our projects and looking at this aspect of technology and how it effects various people and whether they just let it naturally sit in their life, or if they critically reflect on the effects of technology both positively and negitavely.
I think your workshop allowed us to reflect on maybe how we’ve already been affected by technology, and the ways we’ve used it and enjoy it and how it may hold us back. How within our development growing up, it has just fed into our life almost ominously, which means its background noise, it’s the 'norm', especially for this generation. I felt like allowing a space for this reflection was great and potentially we could collaborate further and I'm excited to see what comes from this workshop and this feedback from the group of people we were working with.
Natasha: Is there any advice you have for me moving forward with my project?
Lauren: I think the advice I have is to not police yourself too much and to allow yourself to explore ideas without judgement and throw them away whenever necessary. To have a pool of research and ideas to pick from. I think this allows a little bit more freedom and gives you the chance to have space in creating because creating from pressure and in an educational environment is very different to creating on your own terms. So have awareness of this and try and be as true to your idea as possible. Really look at the feedback you got from the workshop and use this to inform your art and your project. I think it was a great start that you made and whatever you do with it will be really important to how we all reflect on childhood. I think it will be relatable no matter who you are talking to, and I think there is power in that.
Natasha: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions!
Lauren: I am twenty-four and I am from south-east London. I currently live in south-east London, and I grew up here as well.
Natasha: what inspired you to become an artist / when did you first aspire to be one?
Lauren: I think I fell into becoming an artist and I didn’t really know what that meant until perhaps I graduated from university so my vocational training at the place, I did for four years. Being an artist, I think you can just be quite naïve to the fact that the things that your making is considered art, especially for myself as a dance artist. I think there is an emphasis on training performing learning and not so much on creating, cognitive thinking and expanding your knowledge and your work. Maybe perhaps that’s because I danced from a young age.
From the age of three, I started taking dance lessons in a range of styles ballet, tap, modern, jazz, contemporary, and I then went to the brits' school for collage so for two years studying all different styles of dance again. And then went on to study for three years BA at London contemporary dance school. At the place for my BA, I started to maybe open my mind a little bit more to creating and being inspired by mainly my peers, but I don’t think I had the confidence yet to feel like I was worthy to create. Then I think from graduating in the pandemic and having a bit of time out I started to really hone in on what I was inspired by and what I enjoyed. And I think creating was a big part of that and is also a hub where you can connect with different ideas and the world and thoughts. Especially when there is a lot going on politically and in terms of advancements in lots of different forms.
I then did an extra year at the place. I did an MA course called “Edge” which was a post graduate study and acted as a post graduate company. Within this year I think that I built up a lot of confidence and let go of a lot of things that were holding me back, and this was the year I really started to create and collaborate with peers on a different course called “Screen dance”. I then created my project called “DIN” and this was a short dance film based on my studies on advancements in technology and surveillance. “DIN” was a collaboration of myself as the creator and choreographer a little bit of producing as well. It was Laura Roe (also known as Margo Roe) who was the director, DOP (director of picture) Bart Bazaz who was the cinematographer, there was also Joanna Ward who was the composer and Amber ward who was designing and creating the costumes.
This was my first experience creating a work and collaborating with that many people. It was quite ambitious because I was still studying and working towards various performances as a dancer and a performer. And I was overwhelmed but also focused and kind of accelerated by the aspects of creating and finding things within this collaboration that I haven’t found before. It just seemed like there were endless possibilities and within the time restriction we had and the deadline we created something I was really proud of.
Natasha: What made you want to carry on as an artist?
Lauren: I think from this initial project and collaboration, I realized that creating didn’t always have to be a final product and the power within being able to share ideas and thoughts and promote conversations around something rather than just having a statement. I think creating art allows me to work through ideas myself but also allow this to translate to an audience and allow them to create their own opinions about a certain subject. It's not about trying to make people think in a certain way, it's about having a seed of an idea, thoughts, research and communicating this through my art film which is dance. I really enjoy collaborating and I think that this is something that inspires me because working with different mediums within movement allows me to have more possibilities within the art form. And I think it’s a beautiful thing to be able to express thought and words in a physical form or a visual form because I feel like sometimes emotions, ideas, and thoughts exceed words, so it allows me to be able to express or translate ideas that maybe ideas words cannot.
Natasha: What specific art mediums do you work with currently and is there any others you want to try?
Lauren: Well at the moment, I work mainly with movement with movement and, I'm really fortunate that movement can translate to a lot of things and relate to a lot of people as it's something we do in everyday life. I try and use movement both in a pedestrian manner and also, in a more technical manner depending on what project I'm working on and who I’m working with, who I'm trying to reach out to, relate to, and what I'm trying to translate to an audience or a group of people. I think that there are so many possibilities within movement and whether that’s in a gestural sense, how we communicate through body language or just everyday movements that we naturally as an instinct do.
I think there's so much research on movement that the possibilities are endless, but I like to play with different environments. You can be sight specific, so work with an environment that you feel like says something to you and mold the movement and create within that space. It’s a lot of research on phenomenology, that’s super interesting and I definitely want to read up a little bit more that and, in the future, try and work a little bit more sight specifically. Especially to be able to give access to the community more and bridge the gap between art and the everyday person. I also use just creative writing, abstract writing, research a lot and academic works. I try and use film and I’d like to expand my knowledge on film, but I work a lot with as I mentioned before, Margo Roe and Bart Bazaz who have a lot more knowledge on this aspect so sometimes it's great to be able to put your guard down and say this isn’t my field but I know someone who I can really learn from and learn with.
In addition to this, my current research is on advancements on technology so whether that is a medium I am unsure, but I am trying to work within this field to try and keep up with advancements in our digital age and translate my artistry on to something that is a little bit beyond me, which I'm still working out, but that is the aim for this year.
Natasha: How do you think your work has progressed overtime?
Lauren: I feel like my work over the last few years has gained more confidence and has become a bit more full bodied in terms of self-assurance and I think it's natural to have doubts within your work and to never get past a researching stage. I have had so many thoughts and ideas I'll want to follow through, but never got the chance to make them into a body of work. So, I am trying to really commit to ideas no matter how small or large and no matter what scale I want them to be seen on. I think there is a freedom in this, and I am just trying to be a little bit more open minded in terms of the work that I generate and not as strict in what form it comes out in. I think that overtime it has progressed in terms of how specific I am to an area of research and how open I am to others feeding into this research.
Natasha: Is there something specific that you want to challenge through your work?
Lauren: I think being a dance artist, choreogropher, performer, I aim to create work and allow others to create work to connect in general, connect to other people to refashion thoughts, connect to the environment, connect to emotions. I think connecting and relating and allowing someone to see something of themselves or something of their own experience within your work is really important. And to have a reaction, no matter what this reaction is no matter if it’s positive or negative I think is important. So, creating something that is vulnerable and open and as real as possible or trying to get to the aspect of the human experience within a work and I, at the moment am researching technology and we are looking at the digital, the online. So how do the students that I am working with really feel about this topic and how honest can they be about their feelings and then, how can I try and scope this or mold this into some body of work that can be seen by an outside audience and in a physical form to allow them to think about their own experiences. I think that mainly I want to challenge how much relflection you can have and what you can feel rather than a specific element. I think I'm quite open to letting that happen not planning ahead too much and letting natural things occur within the work.
Natasha: What did you think of my workshop inspired by your project?
Lauren: I really enjoyed your workshop Natasha. I felt like there was a direct correleation and relationship between our projects and looking at this aspect of technology and how it effects various people and whether they just let it naturally sit in their life, or if they critically reflect on the effects of technology both positively and negitavely.
I think your workshop allowed us to reflect on maybe how we’ve already been affected by technology, and the ways we’ve used it and enjoy it and how it may hold us back. How within our development growing up, it has just fed into our life almost ominously, which means its background noise, it’s the 'norm', especially for this generation. I felt like allowing a space for this reflection was great and potentially we could collaborate further and I'm excited to see what comes from this workshop and this feedback from the group of people we were working with.
Natasha: Is there any advice you have for me moving forward with my project?
Lauren: I think the advice I have is to not police yourself too much and to allow yourself to explore ideas without judgement and throw them away whenever necessary. To have a pool of research and ideas to pick from. I think this allows a little bit more freedom and gives you the chance to have space in creating because creating from pressure and in an educational environment is very different to creating on your own terms. So have awareness of this and try and be as true to your idea as possible. Really look at the feedback you got from the workshop and use this to inform your art and your project. I think it was a great start that you made and whatever you do with it will be really important to how we all reflect on childhood. I think it will be relatable no matter who you are talking to, and I think there is power in that.
Natasha: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions!
