Loren Groenendaal

Loren Groenendaal is a Philadelphia-based dance artist and educator, specializing in contact improvisation, contemporary/modern dance, classical Balinese dance, the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System (LBMS), folk and creative dance. She serves as key member of the Contact Improvisation (CI) community in Philadelphia, organizing a weekly jam, a monthly underscore, assisting with the organization of a weekly class in which she serves as a teacher in the rotating faculty. In addition to dancing CI for 17 years, Loren has been teaching CI since 2009 in adult communities of Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and State College, PA as well as a guest at Arcadia University, Juniata College, Towson University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG).

She has been improvising her entire life, but her formal studies in contact improvisation began at Oberlin College with Ann Cooper Albright in the very same room where CI instigator Steve Paxton developed "Magnesium", considered the seminal work of CI. She holds an MFA in Choreography from the UNCG, where she continued her CI studies with John Gamble. Other influential teachers of CI, somatics, and partnering include Chris Aiken, David Brick, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Angie Hauser, Curt Haworth, KJ Holmes, Ishmael Houston Jones, Cyrus Khambatta, Sara Shelton Mann, Sharon Mansur, Yvonne Meier, Karen Nelson, Cheryl Pallant, Margaret Paek, Kirstie Simpson, and Nancy Stark Smith. She has maintained continual enthusiasm for CI because it is a fun and playful forum for connecting with others, releasing control, and developing a deeper understanding of physics and life. She is a Certified Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies.

Loren is the artistic director of contemporary dance company, Vervet Dance, through which she has made dances based in contact improvisation, often works intimately with music, and is inspired by nature. She also dances with Swarthmore College's Balinese Gamelan Semara Santi, Katherine Kiefer Stark's The Naked Stark, a release-based contemporary dance company, Jenny Roe Sawyer's From the Earth Dance Project for site-specific, nature inspired dance, and Graffito Works, a site-specific improvisational ensemble. She is a founding member of the Mascher Space Cooperative, an artist run space and organization that benefits the artists in residence and the broader community, and the Impermanent Society of Philadelphia, a group of Philadelphia-area arts practitioners and curators, who support freely improvised live performance.