Lauren Lovette (Resident Choreographer) personifies the intertwining of dance and choreography, moving seamlessly from one to the other. In spring 2022 she was invited to be the first-ever Resident Choreographer for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and she creates new work on the company annually. Born in Thousand Oaks, California, Lauren began studying ballet at the age of 11. She enrolled at the School of American Ballet as a full-time student in 2006, and from 2009 to 2021 she danced with the New York City Ballet (NYCB), quickly rising to the role of principal dancer.
Lauren began creating dance as a ballet student, and, as a principal dancer at NYCB, she choreographed for the 2016 Fall Fashion Gala. She was awarded the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University in 2018, and a year later created a second work for the Fall Fashion Gala. In addition to the Taylor Company and NYCB, her work has been commissioned and performed worldwide—with a full-length Romeo and Juliet at Leipzig Ballet—regionally at American Ballet Theatre, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and Colorado Ballet, and showcased in a self-produced evening, Why It Matters. Lauren received the Clive Barnes Award for dance in December 2012, was the 2012-2013 recipient of the NYCB’s Janice Levin Award, and won the School of American Ballet’s Mae L. Wein award for choreography in 2024. In 2023, Lauren joined the Nantucket Dance Festival as Co-Artistic Director.
Photo credit: Ruven Afanador