This is an excerpt from Maxine's interview with Lauren Gerrie, which is hosted on our Substack, Notes on Sensuality. To read the full interview, click here.
When I think of people that embody everyday sensuality, Lauren Gerrie has always been at the top of my list. Not that I know her personally - I took her IG live dance classes during the COVID lockdowns in 2020, and have admired (read: fan-girled) her approach to life since, from afar. She has an iconic and infectious energy - one of those women that you want to be, for the authentic, energetic expression that she shares with the world.
A creative working in the culinary and movement worlds, Lauren seamlessly moves from movement direction to figure modeling; world building to cooking. She co-founded MOVES with Marisa Competello, a dance class that embodies sensuality and joy in every way. Her world is one you want to be a part of.
With me based in Wellington, New Zealand on a winter’s day, and Lauren in NYC summer before she headed to Paris, we chatted about sensuality as a driving force in life, the development of MOVES, intergenerational wisdom and more. I tried to trim it down, but I just…couldn’t. So settle in.
M: Lauren, hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak. I’m really so thrilled. I was thinking about how I discovered you years ago - I found your MOVES class when we were going into deep, dark COVID times, and it was literally the thing that helped keep me sane alone in my apartment in Auckland.
L: That means a lot. It kept all of us - including Marisa and I - sane. And it’s grown into something that she and I could have never imagined. But it feels really spectacular to be able to share it with someone that you’ve known for so long and danced with for so long. And also that it’s the thing we both love the most, and we get to share that and see it in other people or pull it out of them.
The thing that Marisa and I really try to harness in MOVES and really in any dance class that we enter into is that it should be led with joy and appreciation for being able to move our bodies, being together, sharing any sort of music and dance form that we want.
M: It’s really wonderful, and was such a balm for me. So when did you start MOVES? Where did it all come from?
L: Well, there's two answers to that. We originally started Moves many years ago. I'm really terrible with time but I think we’ve been doing this iteration of Moves for eight years, and we started originally 12 years prior to that because one of our good friends who's also a choreographer and dancer, Ryan Heffington, had a studio in Los Angeles called The Sweat Spot where he taught Sweaty Sundays and Wet Wednesdays. And - I'm from Southern California, so Marisa and I would always be going back for work or pleasure or whatever and always taking Ryan's classes. We loved that the class was all levels - there was no class in New York that was all levels , so with his blessing, we started one.
We were pre-Instagram first of all, and we were keeping with his model which was like a very very LA thing - it was on Sundays, it was in the morning or it was in the late afternoon around 5pm. We were dancing to old songs and we were at this studio that was great but not necessarily right. We did that for a while and then life happened and we stopped - we took a break from it.
We came back to doing MOVES because we found this children’s dance school which happened to be in the same building as the original Sky Ting space on Chrystie Street. Marisa had started taking yoga classes there, and was like, “Should we do MOVES again and just do it there?" And I was like, "Fuck it. Yeah, let's do it." Because our friends had been asking for it again.
But I was working as Marc Jacobs' private chef at the time, so I couldn’t do it during the day. I had to do it at night - so we started doing that. I think it was 8 to 9:30 - we started doing it there, and then the Sky Ting crew started coming down, you know, they are all dancers or former dancers. It was really because of the Sky Ting community that it grew - people started to hear about it and we avoided Instagram for a long time. We would post on our own accounts but you couldn’t really find us.
Then COVID hit, and we were like, okay we have to do this. So that’s when it grew out into the world.
Lauren wears the Underlena Brief.
M: I love how far that goes back. Are you still running from that same building? Sky Ting moved, didn’t it?
L: Yeah, none of us are there anymore - Sky Ting moved to Lafayette between Bleecker and Houston. It's super beautiful. We teach all over now, mostly at Gibney Studios downtown. We just had a class at Martha Graham Studios which is in Westbeth in Greenwich Village and it was so next level - they’re iconic.
M: That sounds like quite a big deal - I feel like I should know who that is!
L: Martha Graham is huge - I mean, she's one of the most famous contemporary choreographers and their company is a big deal. They’ve been a staple of the New York dance community forever - it was founded in 1926.
M: Ok, that’s massive! Congratulations. It’s the big MOVES takeover. I love it. Ok, so you’ve had all these elements of your career - from being a private chef, to moving into a more culinary art space with individuals but also brands. Everything I’ve seen you work on seems to really have that through-line of sensuality - whether that’s food, abundance, joy, movement, embodiment. This has always been so inspiring to me.
Has it always been this way for you? And have you always thought about sensuality as a specific, intentional thing to connect with?
L: Yeah, for sure. I've always had a very very deep connection to my body, the shape of the human form and all the things that we're capable of. I mean, both my parents are creatives - my Dad's an artist and my Mum was an athlete and a creative in her own right. And I think the sensuality of life was very present for me.
Read the rest of Maxine and Lauren's conversation here.