Laurie Sefton

Ms. Sefton’s work and art extends and expands upon her native Southern California childhood. The daughter of two disparate disciplines—aerospace engineering and the visual and performing arts, Ms. Sefton’s work has always echoed tensions and themes from her upbringing. Her father’s precision and secretiveness born of his career as an engineer brought to Southern California during the Cold War is reflected in her work as is the more flowing dynamic influence of her mother, an accomplished visual artist and performer trained at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in piano. Growing up on the edge of the San Fernando Valley in wilder times, her family witnessed the test rocket launches emblematic of the Cold War struggle. Coyotes howled in the distance during her childhood. Next to these wild, raw beginnings, stands her mother’s family reflecting a more classical, almost aristocratic style (her grandfather served in Cuba’s diplomatic corps); her father’s family reflected the rugged, self-sufficient and inventive farmers of the Midwest. Ms. Sefton can recall her father stitching up his own thumb after an accident in his shop. From these two families and the rugged Southern California landscape of her childhood, Ms. Sefton has drawn inspiration, energy, and creativity to create her own unique and challenging style of choreography