Originally from Atlanta, Tori Lawrence is a western Massachusetts-based choreographer, filmmaker, and educator who creates site-specific multimedia performances and digital/analog dance films. Her environmentally-based work inspires an imaginative and sustainable way of looking at, thinking about, and using space. Her site-specific choreography has been presented nationally and internationally, including three commissions by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where she created “Holding Place,” an evening-length dance performance featuring live music by acclaimed Brooklyn-based Bing & Ruth. The work was created in response to the architecture of the Barnes’ new Philadelphia campus. Philadelphia Weekly describes her site-specific work as “poignant,” “stunning,” and “arresting.” As a dancer, she performed with choreographer Sara Shelton Mann from 2020-2022 throughout San Francisco and Berlin.

She is a guest lecturer at Smith College and Keene State College where she teaches dance film, and was awarded the 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence and Dance Lecturer position at Middlebury College, where she taught courses in Movement & Media, Improvisation, and Contemporary Technique. She has been a lecturer at Bennington College, the University of Kansas, and a guest artist at Franklin & Marshall College, Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Drexel University. Tori graduated from Franklin & Marshall College and received her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was a recipient of the Iowa Arts Fellowship.

She has been choreographing live performances & dance films since 2010 and has received funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), Dance Films Association, MA Cultural Council, Vermont Arts Council, and Lighton International Artists Exchange. She has been awarded artist residencies from Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (Trondheim, Norway) and USF Verftet (Bergen, Norway). Other awarded artist residencies and fellowships include: Yaddo (NY; 2018), Djerassi (CA; 2024, 2023, 2017), Volland Foundation (KS; 2024), Playa (OR; 2018), Brunakra (Sweden; 2018, 2019), Chez Bushwick (NY; 2018), Ucross Foundation (WY; 2016), Charlotte Street Foundation (MO; 2016-17), Dance Ireland (Dublin; 2014), and Workshop Foundation (Budapest; 2013).

Tori's choreography and dance films have been presented by Philadelphia Dance Projects, Dance Films Association, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dock11 (Berlin), USF Verftet (Bergen), Lisbon Screendance Festival, Stockholm Screendance Festival, Green Mountain Film Festival, Portland Maine Film Festival, Agite y Sirva Screendance Festival, Oklahoma Dance Film Festival, Legion Arts/CSPS, Lawrence Arts Center, amongst others.