Kelly Howard and Wren LaFeet tear it up at TEDxBend, Bend, OR. photo: Byron Roe
Wren LaFeet is Nomad Dance in collaboration with anyone who will dance. His journey has taken him through improvisational theater to musical theater to Shakespeare, weaving into social partner dance, parading with Vaudeville and modern circus, and embodying a grounded practice with Danyasa™ Yoga. Wren’s own style of dance is a combination of everything he’s learned about live performance, relationships, quantum mechanics, conceptual physics, spirituality, social dynamics and of course, dance. Dance is a form of Jedi Music Appreciation through which, in Wren’s world, the dancer attempts to BECOME the music in a 3rd dimensional form. The result is rarely perfect, completely transitory and nearly impossible to recreate, which is why the dancer must continue dancing; the pursuit of unachievable perfection is a perfect ambition.
Andrea and I at Seattle’s Belltown First Thrusday Art Walk. photo: Todd Hobert
Discovering the art of connection – or social partner dance – in his first professional production of “West Side Story” (1999) inspired the artist he is today. Soon thereafter he began choreographing for his high school dance program. He earned his BA in drama and dance from the University of Washington in 2007. That summer he created the avant garde, Commedia del’Arte dance troupe, The Harlequin Hipsters and has had the pleasure of working with EnJoy Productions, Microsoft, Seattle Art Museum and many more. He co-founded the Harlequin Source School in 2009 to offer a space for people to gather, perform and practice movement arts. Partner dancing – tango, swing, blues, and in Wren’s case, Fusion/Open Source partner dance, is an opportunity for two dancers to come together and co-create a beautiful act of honoring music and each other. Wren views dance as a microcosm of culture and a metaphor for relationship. In his teaching, his goal is to impart tools that will help people become better at connecting with one another and enjoying the present moment through movement. In his performance, he is an improvisational force of nature; allowing sound to enter his body and acting as a conduit for it to become as full a physical manifestation as his expressive vessel will allow (spinaesthesia).
Teaching to a packed house at Beloved Festival, 2012. photo: Akira Chan
In Fall of 2011, Wren created Nomad Dance with the mission to inspire social dance as an integral facet of an emerging global culture. Rarely spending more than a month in one place since January, 2012, Wren has held workshops in every port city on the western United States seaboard and continues to teach in every town he visits. He is a recognized TEDx speaker (click here to see the talk), works as the artist liaison for Envision Festival in Costa Rica and is an affiliate of the Tribal Convergence Network; pioneering the New Renaissance in devotion to modeling sustainable, alternative lifestyles. He invites and accepts dance with anyone willing to take a chance. Find me on the dance floor or on the street and ask!