What people are saying.

  • "How does a small woman wearing glasses and moving mostly in silence on a bare stage keep an audience riveted for nearly an hour?"

    Linda Shapiro, City Pages

  • "There is something irresistible about the dances of Laurie Van Wieren."

    St. Paul Pioneer Press

  • "What makes them work is strong visual imagery and Van Wieren’s true strength, her wit. Sometimes it can be droll and sly, at other times outgoing, almost standup dance comedy. She’s wonderful at the absurdity beneath the surfaces."

    Minneapolis Star Tribune

  • "Eclectic pieces based in bold uncomplicated movement."

    High Performance

  • "Exquisitely performed, well directed and thought-provoking."

    Camille LeFevre, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  • "Her eyes, glowing behind wide-rimmed black glasses, follow a distracting house fly that’s joined us for the evening, or look doubtingly at us, her mutterings a mixture of profundity and lunacy."

    See Chicago Dance

Articles about Van Wieren

Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Laurie Van Wieren

2021 Studio Stories by Mathew Janczewski

Laurie Van Wieren has been a creative force in the Twin Cities for 30+ years. Her choreography has been shown in the Twin Cities, nationally, and in Europe. 9x22 Dance/Lab, her monthly showcase, is the pre-eminent performance platform for local and visiting choreographers. She’s developed work for the Walker Art Center’s Open Field performance, which highlighted 100 local choreographers …

Temporary Action Theory: Southern Theater

2016 City Pages by Linda Shapiro

How does a small woman wearing glasses and moving mostly in silence on a bare stage keep an audience riveted for nearly an hour? In her Temporary Action Theory, recently performed at the Southern Theater, Laurie Van Wieren showed exactly how 40 years of experience and a whole lot of theatrical savvy add up to an evening of gutsy, sophisticated play. Sampling new vaudeville, postmodern gestural flurries, primeval howls, and Dada absurdism, Van Wieren improvised …

The Dance Family

2015 Minnesota Playlist by Lisa Hu

9x22 offers a monthly embrace of the Twin Cities dance family: instructors, performers, professors, and partners have been gathering for almost 12 years to explore and process experimental dance/movement pieces here. Lovingly curated and produced by Laurie Van Wieren, she explained: “[This started] because there was such a need for this kind of work..and there still is.” …

Laurie Van Wieren Returns With “100 Choreographers”

2014 Walker Art Center by Laura Holway

At the Walker’s 1993 opening for In the Spirit of Fluxus, Twin Cities choreographer and curator Laurie Van Wieren performed in Nivea Cream Piece, an event score by Fluxus pioneer Alison Knowles. When Van Wieren reminisces about the event, she’s quick to point out that she and her four cohorts rehearsed with precision, detail and a bit of caution, making sure they got the score’s directions just right. Their efforts were interrupted by Alison Knowles herself giving stern feedback …

An Engaging, Irony-Free Foray into the Making of Performance Giving Dance A Chance

2013 Walker Art Center by Camille leFevre

Laurie Van Wieren has done something wonderful and original with her newest curatorial project, Monday Live Arts: She’s made the making of performance fun, enlightening, and participatory for viewers. “It’s real,” she enthused after the show on August 5. “I tell them, ‘Keep it real.’ And the configuration [she gestures, marking out the short rows that form a box around the center of the studio where most of the action happens] encourages that, don’t you think?”…

Laurie Van Wieren Livens Up The Museum

2012 Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND

Choreographer Laurie Van Wieren has been a resident here at the Museum for the past week, and we’ve been thrilled to have her. While officially here on “business” exploring ideas for a new dance piece, she’s also been getting involved with some of our day-to-day activities; she took part in a discussion with a group of visiting students and even joined in Marjorie Schlossman’s “Painting at the Plains” class on Wednesday. Her positive attitude and enthusiasm are infectious …

Laurie Van Wieren Choreographer and Critic

2011 Minnesota Playlist by Camille leFevre

In 1980, while working as a museum guard during the Walker Art Center’s Picasso show, I became curious about a formal, rather formidable young woman staffing the entrance desk. “That’s Laurie Van Wieren,” someone told me, in whispery aside. “She’s a choreographer.” I was taking dance classes at the University of Minnesota and Ozone at the time; the idea of working as a dance critic or arts journalistic was barely within my scope of reference …

Just Do It

2009 Minneapolis Playlist by Laura Holway

You can sit in your room, if you want, and try to imagine a new work for the stage but no matter what your medium – text, dance, clowning, puppets, pyrotechnics – you will eventually need to hear, see, and feel what you’ve created in three dimensions. Thankfully, Minnesota is home to many development opportunities for writers, dancers, and creators of all stripes, shapes, and sizes from the accessible to the avant-garde …

Best of 2010 - 2011: Laurie Van Wieren's "2nd Draft: Who Made These Video Tapes"

2011 Minnesota Playlist by Charles Campbell

Despite our brave rhetoric, in which live performance is often misrepresented as more special than a good film, album, or TV show, too often we sit in the audience forcing our eyelids up. Eventually, we give in and applaud the effort involved rather than the integrity of the work. While I like mindless entertainment as much as the next zombie …

A Q&A with Laurie Van Wieren: New Dance Programmer at the Southern Theater

2011 MinnPost by Camille leFevre

Laurie Van Wieren, a long-time performer and dance artist in the Twin Cities, is the new dance-programming director for the Southern Theater. She’s the second person to take on the position this year; the job was created last summer as part of the Southern board of directors’ restructuring of operations and management. Dylan Skybrook, the first dance programmer, is leaving to attend graduate school in Sweden …

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