Laurel Lawson

Laurel Lawson is a choreographic collaborator, dancer, designer, and engineer with Kinetic Light. She is also a leader and advocate for disability arts. She is the primary costume and makeup designer, and in collaboration with Top End’s Paul Schulte designed the wheelchairs that she and Alice use in performance, as well as contributing other visual and technical design. She is also the product designer and lead for Audimance, the company's app which revolutionizes audio description for non-visual audiences.

Realizing that dance combined her lifelong loves of art and athleticism, Lawson began her professional dance career with Atlanta’s Full Radius Dance in 2004. She continues to work with Full Radius Dance as well as Kinetic Light and her independent practice.

Lawson's choreography is marked by intensive partnering and grounded technique. Bringing the nuance of disabled artistry, she creates work for all ensembles including nondisabled, disabled, and physically integrated companies. She often weaves together abstract and concrete themes with overarching mythological inspiration, with a focus on an engaging and immersive audience experience, and her work was recognized with a 2019-20 Dance/USA Artist Fellowship. Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists are made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Beyond the studio, Lawson is the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems, a boutique engineering consultancy that specializes in solving novel, multi-realm problems of all sizes for a global clientele. A noted public speaker and teacher, she speaks on a range of technical topics as well as on leadership and executive practice, culture and equity, and how to cultivate creativity and drive innovation. Lawson is also a member of the USA Women's Sled Hockey Team.