This is Kristie Lauren’s sixth season as instructor with the Inspiration Dance Company, where she teaches all levels of Modern Dance technique as well as the upper four levels of Ballet and Pointe. Kristie’s additional experience as a dance educator includes teaching as guest instructor at Western Oregon University and at several private studios in the San Francisco Bay Area. With fifteen years experience as a dance educator, performer and choreographer, Kristie brings a wealth of knowledge to her class instruction. Her classes in both Ballet and Modern emphasize strength building through anatomically and physiologically correct instruction. She loves encouraging students to grow creatively through dance along while utilizing technique as a strong foundational base.
Kristie moved to Oregon in 2014 joining the Willamette Valley’s professional touring company Rainbow Dance Theatre as a principal dancer. While with RDT she created several starring roles in the repertory including productions of iLumiDance, Earth Angel, Garden of Earthly Delights and SELFIE and toured annually throughout the United States and Canada. Prior to moving to Oregon, Kristie has danced professionally for many years in both modern and ballet companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her first company affiliation was with the San Francisco Theater Ballet where she performed in several classical works. Following that Kristie toured throughout the United States for five years with the modern dance company Moving Arts Dance while also performing as guest artist with Menlowe Ballet, Quixotic Dance Technologies and Sabaku Fusion. Bringing her modern dance background into a new genre, Kristie has been a creative part of the Tribal Dance Fusion movement, and has performed with various tribal fusion artists in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Tijuana, and Baja, Mexico and in Germany. Kristie appears prominently in the Lumen Obscura media production Visions: A Night of Dark & Theatrical Belly Dance.
Kristie received her Bachelor of Arts degree in dance from Western Oregon University in 2018 and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in dance while keeping up her full-time teaching load at the Inspiration Dance Company and being mom to two wonderful children, ages 2 and 15! Her dream is to become a dance professor at a major US university sometime in the future.