SLO Movement Arts Center dancers perform a multi-experience show at Cuesta on June 1 and 2 

After moving to San Luis Obispo 12 years ago from the Netherlands, Maartje Lawrence decided to turn her love for dance into a studio so she can share that passion with the youth around her.

"I have this love for movement and art and connection, and I feel like a lot of those things go together in dance because you have to work together as a team and as a group. You work toward a project," Lawrence told New Times. "So, I was like, 'I need to start my own school.'"

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• Photo Courtesy Of Maartje Lawrence
• BEACH DAY San Luis Obispo Movement Arts Center students spent the day at the beach to freely move their body in nature and connect with the space around them. The results of that day will be onstage at the Cuesta College Cultural and Performing Arts Center on June 1 and 2.

Settling in SLO after hopping around different cities across Europe and the United States where studios were abundant, Lawrence said she noticed a lack of studios here that children could enjoy.

"I was like I need to start my own school, and I kind of built a school from the ground up, just like the one I had in Europe but with my own twist," she said. "It's still very structured, still very disciplined, and like real training but soulful with the hearts and minds of kids in mind. That started about eight years ago."

The San Luis Obispo Movement Arts Center is located at in SLO at 2074 Parker St., suite 100, and hosts conservatory, ballet, and jazz classes for those between the ages of 4 and 18 while also offering adult ballet and contemporary classes for residents who have been drawn to dance.

While her adult class opted out of the option, Lawrence and her young students will be staging a show at Cuesta College Cultural and Performing Arts Center on June 1 and 2 called Ballet Unbound Outside/In where classicism meets modern convention.

"I asked my kids one day, 'If you could pick one place in SLO or near SLO to visit that makes you feel peaceful and calm and happy, where would you go?' And then the kids came up with ideas and I wrote them down and I was like, 'Wait something is here and we need to go to these places and see what happens to their bodies and what they come up with creatively,'" she said. "I took the little ones to the beach, the 9-year-olds to Barnes and Noble, which was amazing, and they opened up for us, literally dancing on the elevator and in between the bookshelves, it was so much fun."

Lawrence took the oldest group to a forest in Los Osos where they were able to express their excitement and dance in nature.

"My collaborator, Brook Munro, who is the musician, he recorded those sounds and Richard Fusillo took the images, and now the show is going to show our experiences in those places with the images projected and the music made for them," she said. "It's going to be a multi-arts collaboration."

The performance will showcase around 80 SLO Movement Arts Center students and also 24 students from Lawrence's Cal Poly dance class where dancers will collaborate with sculptor and painter Guy Kinnear to bring scenic elements to the stage and create a world where dancers carve space, shift our perception of time, and come together to create a work of individual expression, Lawrence said.

Those interested in attending the show can get tickets at cuesta.universitytickets.com.

Fast facts

• Tools, machines used in public works projects, bucket trucks, and tractors will be on display at the downtown SLO Farmers' Market to help kick off the annual Public Works Night. Staff from SLO and other neighboring cities will be out in full force to answer questions and give tours at their booth from 6 to 9 p.m. Δ

Reach Staff Writer Samantha Herrera at [email protected].