Lauren Tietz, MFA, RCST®, LMT is a dance and movement-based interdisciplinary artist and teacher working with the body through the different mediums of dance performance, installation, dance film and writing. In love with site-specific work Lauren is involved with land-based collaborative movement research, where the act of land-ing, place-ing and home-ing invites reciprocal rememberings, interspecies communing and has been a steady focus of her dance, research and writing. She has been making, performing and teaching dance in various settings from Marfa and Big Bend Texas, the forests of Santa Fe, abandoned buildings by the Mexican border to ancient caves in Cappadoccia Turkey.

She has worked in the field of Somatic Education & Therapy for over twenty years. She regularly teaches Authentic Movement (Contemplative Dance) classes, workshops and retreats where she supports students in building more capacity to safely meet what is arising internally, thus supporting outward expression and a deepening of capacity to orient to interpersonal support and relational repair. She also works one on one with clients as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist & TRE provider (tension & trauma release exercise) bringing an emotionally attuned compassionate presence to her work as she holds space for intrapersonal inquiry, relational healing and profound physiological shifts.

 
Lauren has worked collaboratively with artists across mediums, directed projects, and danced in the works of other artists since 2000. Some of these works include: Wicked Cricket (a Modern Butoh company directed by Caroline Sutton); The North Project (in collaboration with Ron Berry and others at The Blue Theater); Arrangement for Manyes and Julius (IMP for Fusebox Festival); Experiments in A Creek bed (Fusebox Festival); Improvisational Movement Project (Clear Spring, Blue Theater); The Meeting Point (The Blanton Museum, directed by Julie Nathanielsz), Mammal (at TDIF with Brandon Gonzalez); works by Heloise Gold, Elaine Dove, Chris Cogburn and Juan Garcia, Ellen Bartel; Together Alone (with Alicia Grayson and Travis Weller); Polyvagal (with Brandon Gonzalez and Nicole Bindler); multiple performances for Interference Festival  and many more.
 
Intrigued with the experience of small, daily encounters and the cumulative impressions they make on humans, she is curious about touch and perception and the magic of collaboration. Influenced by the phenomena of the senses, reflexes and myriad survival methods humans employ in response to danger, safety, pleasure, and poetics she sees the body as personal, cultural and planetary archive.

Lauren completed her MFA in New Media (dance and film) at Transart Institute in 2011. Since 2009 she has been exploring dance and movement through the lens of the camera. Her films have been screened at: On The Wall: Berlin Dance on Film Series (2010 – AdamJump and Velocity is a Vector Quantity), The Not Festival NY (2011 Sink Float Swallow Spit) and The 5th International Video Art Festival Camaguey Cuba (2013 Sink Float Swallow Spit), Big Medium Gallery Austin (Daven Dowse & Daven Dowse Part I) 2015 & 2016, Austin Community College Film Screening 2016 (Sink Float Swallow Spit), Experimental Response Cinema Local Filmmakers Showcase Austin 2017 & 2024 (Daven Dowse Part I) and the Texas Dance Festival Film Screening 2018 (Daven Dowse Part I).  

Lauren’s experience teaching extends from Austin dance studios to UT Austin, Texas State University, Austin Community College, Texas Dance Improvisational Festival, to independent workshops in Austin, Santa Fe NM and abroad. Over the last twenty years she has facilitated classes, workshops and retreats in Authentic Movement (Contemplative Dance), Contact Improvisation and Land-based improvisational composition and research rooted in sensing & sourcing support arising from seen and unseen forces. Currently she teaches ongoing classes and workshops online and in person where she is based in Santa Fe New Mexico.