About Harmonic Movement
Harmonic Movement is a philosophy and a set of practices for creative growth, healing, and connection, developed through my lifelong work as a composer, dancer, writer, teacher, and healing arts practitioner.
The philosophy behind Harmonic Movement rests on three beliefs: everyone is inherently creative, everyone needs an outlet for creative expression, and everyone has a right to participate in the arts.
Those beliefs shape everything I offer, whether it's a community dance class, a music lesson, a program for a school, or a training for teachers. Each one is built on five tenets that run through all of my work:
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Freedom through structure. A well-composed structure or set of constraints doesn't limit creative expression, it makes it possible by giving each person a container to explore inside.
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Creative encounter. Meeting a person, a place, or a material with openness and without judgment or expectation, with the intention that something new will be born.
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Creating equitable entry points. Making sure anyone can find a way into creative practice that fits their own body, history, culture, and way of expressing themselves.
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Honoring nature. Respecting the nature of each person, being, body, and environment.
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Movement. Literal and figurative: growth, change, and healing.
When I talk about healing in the context of Harmonic Movement and the services I offer, it is in the tradition of the healing arts, not clinical therapy. None of the services I offer are intended to diagnose or treat any illness or medical condition and are not a substitute for medical or mental health care. Instead, the purpose behind Harmonic Movement is to assist individuals and communities in cultivating their own creative practices for personal growth and wellbeing
Harmonic Movement is based in Portland, Oregon, where I offer in-person classes, lessons, and programs. Some services are also available online, and I may be available to travel for professional development, teaching artist work, and other engagements. If you have something in mind, get in touch.
Meet Lauren V. Coons
Lauren V. Coons is an intermedia composer, performer, writer, healing arts practitioner, and teaching artist based in Portland, Oregon. As a lifelong interdisciplinary artist, Lauren is driven by a deep belief in the power of creativity to heal, connect, and bring meaning to everyday life, and she brings that belief equally to her compositional work and to her teaching, facilitation, and community practice.
Lauren's compositions span a wide range of instrumentation, voice, and electronics, and frequently integrate movement, poetry, spoken word, and visual art into a single intermedia work. She composes open and adaptable works for people of all abilities and disabilities, creating pieces that invite individual interpretation and highlight the unique creativity and voice of each performer. Her creative process is rooted in curiosity and presence: exploring a small urban dam, spending an hour with a tree, walking as slowly as possible over a rickety footbridge, or documenting every neighborhood in her hometown. Whatever the medium, her work is characterized by a sense of playfulness and reverence, and favors simplicity as a means of uncovering depth. She frequently invites performers and audiences into the compositional process itself, whether through improvisation, collaborative interpretation of non-traditional notation, or community contribution via social media and outreach, working to dissolve the walls between composer, performer, and audience.
Lauren has composed works by invitation from the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the UNM Health Sciences Center Orchestra, Abrepaso Flamenco, Wave Dash Duo, New Music New Mexico, and the New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Her work has been performed at the John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium, where she was recognized as the recipient of the 2016 Scott Wilkinson Composition Award.
Lauren's creative life has always moved between sound and movement. With over thirty years of study in multiple dance forms including ballet, jazz, contemporary, modern, contact improvisation, and West African dance, her work as a dancer and choreographer is as central to her practice as her work as a composer, encompassing choreography, movement-sound composition, and performance in both formal and community contexts.
Lauren currently serves as Program Director at Ethos Music Center in Portland, Oregon, where she is committed to making music education and the arts accessible to all. She has also worked as an artist-in-medicine for the University of New Mexico's Arts-in-Medicine program, bringing music and mindfulness to patients and staff at UNM Hospital, and co-taught the Healing Arts courses at UNM alongside program founder Dr. Patricia Ann Repar. She has served as a composer teaching artist for the Santa Fe Opera's Active Learning Through Opera program and as a faculty member at Albuquerque Academy's Think Summer program, teaching music, composition, and Healing Arts. She is also proud to have delivered arts programming through the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque, and the UNM Music Prep School.
Lauren holds a Master of Music degree with dual concentrations in Music Theory & Composition and Musicology from the University of New Mexico (2017), where she specialized in American experimentalism, improvisation and indeterminacy, post-tonal theory, and social practice art. She is a Polestar Pilates trained and AFPA-certified Pilates Mat instructor, and a School of Positive Transformation certified mindfulness and meditation teacher.