Warnecke Awarded Trillium Arts Residency

May 10, 2022

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Lauren Warnecke, School of Theatre Arts recruitment coordinator and adjunct faculty, was one of six artists from around the globe to be awarded a spring 2022 Trillium Arts residency. 

Warnecke was selected from an application pool based on her artistic merit and quality of her project plans while visiting Trillium.

She will spend a week this summer at an artists’ retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, N.C. The Trillium Arts residency provides a secluded location to allow artists to pursue creative endeavors. 

During her residency, Warnecke will spend time sifting through archives from the Mordine & Company Dance Theatre based in Chicago. Under the direction of Shirley Mordine, Mordine & Company is the Midwest's longest-running contemporary dance company with critically acclaimed choreography. 

The archive exploration is part of a larger project identifying and cataloging 50 years of artifacts, photographs and print and digital media, said Warnecke.

“As a Chicago dance critic, I watched and wrote about Mordine and her company for 10 of those 50 years. I plan to simultaneously conduct research and get down some scribbles for what I hope will be a future biography about Shirley’s life and career,” said Warnecke. 

In addition to her position at Wesleyan, Warnecke is a freelance culture reporter contributing to the Chicago Tribune and WGLT Radio. She reviews dance for the Tribune and previously wrote for See Chicago Dance, serving as editor from 2018-2021. During that time, Warnecke co-facilitated dance writing intensives with the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience in Durban, South Africa. She has been a resident writer at JOMBA!, the Bates Dance Festival and the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. 

Warnecke has also managed community outreach and arts education programs, overseen grant writing and communications for small arts organizations, curated and produced live events and led archival and research projects.

By Julia Perez