Laura Malpass

Laura Malpass is a ballet and contemporary dance teaching artist, dancer, and choreographer, interested in the ways dance can transcend all boundaries we perceive or feebly construct, empowering individuals and transforming communities for the better. She creates dance work rooted in story and identity to unpack how our physical bodies hold the memory of our emotional, relational, and experiential lives. Laura’s work has been presented around the San Francisco Bay Area and across the Front Range in Colorado, including large theatres like the California Theatre, El Campanil Theatre, and Campbell Heritage Theatre, as well as more intimate performance spaces like elevators, sidewalks, CU’s Charlotte York Irey Theatre, Studio 8 Berkeley, and Denver’s Counterpath. 

 

Originally from Roanoke, VA, her dance training began leaping down local grocery store aisles and with an antique music box on her living room floor. She studied more formally at Southwest Virginia Ballet, the School of the Grand Rapids Ballet, and le Centre de Danse du Marais in Paris. After graduating with a major in Psychology and minors in Dance and French from Hope College, she danced professionally with contemporary company Moving Arts in the SF Bay Area, touring throughout the Southwest, as well as with Coco et Compagnie and other freelance projects. In 2019, Laura completed her MFA in Dance at CU Boulder, with a secondary emphasis in Somatics and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies. Laura’s thesis, when the honey turns to dust, explored the power of myth and memory in the construction of identity, interrogating what happens when our memories morph and fade and shifting neural pathways reshape the inner landscapes of our physicality. Her other research interests include death and loss, community, enmeshment, and resilience, queering the balletic line, and the role of religion in ballet death plots being used as sociopolitical tools.

 

Teaching is Laura’s passion - ballet, contemporary, improv, composition, and creative movement to all ages and abilities. She is interested in how somatic pedagogy can be used as feminist pedagogical tool to restructure classroom power dynamics. She is an ABT® Certified Teacher in Primary through Level 7 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum, and she was named a Teaching Fellow in 2015. She is a Project Plié Partner Teacher, dedicated to making comprehensive training and support more accessible to students and teachers from underrepresented communities so that professional ballet in 21st Century United States can begin to be truly representative of the United States. She has taught dance courses and as a guest artist in universities, public schools, retirement communities, dance studios, and community centers around the US.