Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, living and working on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kahá:ka Nation. Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last twelve years has been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge and impacts on colonial trauma. Her creations have been presented across Canada and even in Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, the US and the UK.
Lara Kramer’s work employs powerful imagery. Often blunt and raw, playing with the strengths and vulnerability of the body, her pieces stand out for their engagement, sensitivity, close and instinctive listening to the body, and her attention to the invisible.
She has been on the faculty of the Indigenous Dance Residency at The Banff Centre and has taught workshops across Canada and in Australia and New Zealand. In 2016 Lara initiated The Cradleboard Project, a community project fostering the reclaiming of traditional practices developed in collaboration with Anishinaabe artists and knowledge keeper Ida Baptiste that ran for two years in Tiohti:áke/Montreal. She was the guest teacher at Nunatta Isiginnaartitsisarfia – The National Theatre of Greenland in 2018. She also landed her debut role in François Delisle film Cash Nexus (2018) as supporting character Angie. Lara has participated in several residencies including Indian Residential School Museum of Canada in Portage la Prairie (2009) and Dancemakers Artist in Residence from (2018-2021).
Said The Globe and Mail, “Kramer is an aboriginal choreographer, but her works have universal resonance… [she] is a talent to watch. She wears her heart on her sleeve, which translates into dance theatre that is as vulnerable as it is emotional.”
Lara’s works have included NGS (Native Girl Syndrome) (2013) which was met with critical acclaim across the country; her solo work Tame (2015) which she showed in its very nascent stage at Native Earth’s 2015 Weesageechak Begins to Dance Annual Festival of Indigenous Works; and, most recently, Windigo which was performed at Festival TransAmériquwes, Montréal in May 2018.