UCLA Arts welcomes Kate Ladenheim to the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (WACD) as assistant professor, effective July 1, 2024.
Ladenheim is a choreographer, educator, and creative technologist with work that spans interactive installations, media design, performance, and robotics. She researches bodies in motion and how they impact and are impacted by systems of social and technological pressure.
She will be teaching Choreography & Composition and Dance History & Technology Research. Her research areas include dance and motion capture, dance notational technologies, computational choreographic processes, robotic choreographies, performance and media studies.
Ladenheim joins UCLA from the University of Maryland, where she was visiting faculty in creative practice at the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance. Ladenheim previously conducted research in motion interfaces for robotics design at UCLA and was the 2019–2020 Artist in Residence at the Robotics, Automation and Dance Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Ladenheim's artistic projects have been presented internationally at National Sawdust, Media Art Xploration, Dance Place, Brown University, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, The Invisible Dog, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and The Performance Arcade (New Zealand). Ladenheim was celebrated in Dance Magazine as one of “25 to Watch” and “Best of 2018.”
"What I particularly appreciate about WACD (and UCLA as a whole) is its commitment to embedding research within real-world contexts," said Ladenheim. "For students and faculty at WACD, dance doesn’t exist in a rarefied vacuum — it’s in fluid context and conversation with global concerns and movements. I'm thrilled at the prospect of my research — focusing on the interplay between the body and new technologies, media, and machinery — adding to and enriching these vital discourses about the body and choreographic practice. Further, WACD is home to several artists and researchers who I’ve long admired. I'm humbled that I get to be their colleague and to learn from and alongside them."
Ladenheim holds a B.F.A. in Dance Performance from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and an M.F.A. in Media Design Practices from ArtCenter College of Design.
Header image: A photo of Kate Ladenheim. (Chelsea Robin Lee)