Lauren Baines Dance/Theatre

Lauren Baines Dance/Theatre Modern Dance | Dance Theatre | Interdisciplinary Performance | Site Dance | Performance Installation

Lauren Baines Dance/Theatre utilizes movement as a point of departure to examine universal and personal truths, questions, and stories. Committed to the creative process, dances originate from research and discussion, developing in an environment that values movement invention and individual expression in a technically challenging landscape. Invested in collaborative and interdisciplinary processes, we create works of modern dance that incorporate diverse artistic disciplines emerging through rich creative investigations between artists. Issues of communication, memory, perception, loss, identity formation, and coincidence guide our body of work as we explore, reflect, and question multiple aspects of the human experience in pieces ranging from pure dance to dance theatre and site dance.

07/29/2026

Wingspan 30 Feet, A Wearable Sanctuary/Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao with Sasha Vermel

Performance / Sophie Lastra

Exhibition/The Art and Architecture of Maybe curated by Kelly Sicat and Judy Dennis

3D film footage by Florian Pilsl, Editing and bird composition by Robin Lasser, Cello composition by Gustavo Lorenzatti

Earlier this month Wingspan 30 Feet was performed at the Montalvo Art Center, 2026 Marcus Exhibition. Performances by Lauren Baines, Maija Fletcher, Sophie Lastra, and Sasha Vermel

Situated within a garden inhabited by native plantings, Wingspan: A Wearable Sanctuary merges body, bird, architecture, and landscape in a temporary hybrid form.

Migration and adaptation are natural conditions of survival: birds traverse territories, plants reseed and root, and architectural forms travel across time and geography. Visitors activate the work by setting a wooden bench swing in motion, triggering a layered soundscape of endangered and thriving California bird calls interwoven with human voice and an original cello composition.

In a moment of ecological precarity, joy becomes a form of resistance. What is vanishing does not fall silent. Through embodied participation, human movement amplifies what remains. The Garden Dress Tent becomes a resonant aviary, where vitality and vulnerability exist in charged balance.

The Art & Architecture of Maybe, Montalvo’s 2026 Marcus Exhibition, examines the role that art, when integrated with arc...
06/30/2026

The Art & Architecture of Maybe, Montalvo’s 2026 Marcus Exhibition, examines the role that art, when integrated with architectural elements and sensibilities, can have in building community. While art is an act of personal communication, architecture is explicitly committed to connecting people to each other and the landscape. At the intersection of these two disciplines, the horizon line of magical thinking becomes visible.

Curated by Kelly Sicat and Judy Dennis / Commission by Montalvo Arts Center

Situated within a garden inhabited by native plantings, Wingspan: A Wearable Sanctuary merges body, bird, architecture, and landscape in a temporary hybrid form. Installation created by Robin Lasser + Adrienne Pao and Sasha Vermel.

Performed by Lauren Baines, Sophie Lastra, and Maija Fletcher.

Drawing from the historic arches of Villa Montalvo, the Dress Tent translates the estate’s architectural language into a winged, inhabitable structure that extends built space into living habitat–serving as a threshold between estate and ecology.

Migration and adaptation are natural conditions of survival: birds traverse territories, plants reseed and root, and architectural forms travel across time and geography. Visitors activate the work by setting a wooden bench swing in motion, triggering a layered soundscape of endangered and thriving California bird calls interwoven with human voice and an original cello composition. The surrounding native plantings echo the installation’s color and reinforce its field of resonance.

In a moment of ecological precarity, joy becomes a form of resistance. What is vanishing does not fall silent. Through embodied participation, human movement amplifies what remains. The Garden Dress Tent becomes a resonant aviary, where vitality and vulnerability exist in charged balance.

Video: https://vimeo.com/1185306917?fl=pl&fe=sh

First planted in 2012 at Montalvo Arts Center, the Edible Garden Dress Tent returned—alive again on May 1, 2026 for Art ...
05/05/2026

First planted in 2012 at Montalvo Arts Center, the Edible Garden Dress Tent returned—alive again on May 1, 2026 for Art of Fashion Botanicals, activated by dancer/choreographer Lauren Baines.

Commissioned by Montalvo Arts Center— curated by Kelly Sicat and Judy Dennis—this reawakening evolves into Vanishing Wings Sanctuary (June 2026): a newly planted dress tent installation within a native garden where the gardener becomes a bird with a 30-foot wingspan.

By Robin Lasser & Adrienne Pao. In progress—stay with us.

With thanks to Montalvo Arts Center for the 2026 Dress Tent commission
lasser

Thank you and for inviting me back to activate The Edible Dress Tent by .lasser and one more time. Always such a spec...
05/03/2026

Thank you and for inviting me back to activate The Edible Dress Tent by .lasser and one more time. Always such a special homecoming to return to

The view from last night’s performance. More to come!
05/02/2026

The view from last night’s performance. More to come!

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1345 The Alameda
San Jose, CA
95126

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