Butler woman’s expressive dance piece highlights workplace gender inequalities
A dance piece choreographed and entered into a New York City dance festival by a Slippery Rock University student aims to examine and express the experience of women working in corporate America.
SRU junior Lauren Mortimer will perform her contemporary dance piece, “Breaking Barriers,” on Feb. 14 at the SoloDuo Dance Festival in New York City.
A lifelong dancer and Butler native, Mortimer said her mother’s experience inspired her to create a dance that expressed her career frustrations and those of women facing barriers and inequities in their careers. The dance is a little under six minutes long and features Mortimer alone on stage with nothing but a desk and chair to tell the story of gender inequality in the workplace.
“I am pretending to type and answer the phone, and I am reading this book and get frustrated because I feel like my work and my level of strength in the workplace will never be good enough,” Mortimer said. “The movements at the desk set the scene for the story.”
In order to depict a workplace and the inequalities faced by her mother and women in corporate America, Mortimer wrote out ideas on how those issues could be expressed through movement to music. She said there are big swings in the piece — she uses a desk and chair as props in the dance — but there are also smaller movements she said amplify the meaning of the dance.
“I am really interested in small details,” Mortimer said. “I worked on small details and moves to represent frustration. There are a couple points in the dance where I am really reaching toward the ceiling and trying to break through.”
Mortimer began dancing at a young age, starting with ballet and continuing into several forms which have shaped her personal dancing style. She said the mixture of dance styles she has learned throughout her life have helped her create choreography that is specific to her.
“Most dancers have one style they enjoy and continue to work on, but I love being versatile and trying something new,” Mortimer said. “I danced to most of these styles growing up, but in university setting, it’s mostly jazz and ballet. Sometimes I miss contemporary and fusion styles.”
Mortimer is now working toward not only earning her Bachelor in Fine Arts in dance at SRU, but also a Bachelor in Elementary Education — a double major that was all Mortimer’s idea, according to her mother, Brandi Weber-Mortimer.
While she is trained in several styles and enjoys being able to perform them individually, Mortimer said she enjoys choreographing in more abstract dance styles — skills that did her well when developing her festival entry dance.
“Ballet started everything and modern kind of transformed it. It’s a lot less structured,” Mortimer said. “I’ve always had a passion for improving, like dancing on my own and experimenting with my body.”
It was around high school when Mortimer began taking notice of her mother’s work schedule and work-life balance. Weber-Mortimer said she was almost never home because of her work at schools, including DeVry University and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
Talk about her mother’s work schedule and the tendency for her to not get paid as much as men in similar roles is what led Mortimer to make a dance centered around gender inequality in the workforce, according to Weber-Mortimer.
“She said, ‘When I was a child I saw you go off. She saw me work 60 to 70 hours a week,’” Weber-Mortimer said, “’I feel a lot of times that women work as hard as their male counterparts and get passed by.'”
Weber-Mortimer, said she herself is a former dancer, but is still shocked at the level of creativity her daughter is able to show off through dance and choreography.
“It takes a very creative mind to be good at choreography,” Weber-Mortimer said. “I think every time I watch the piece I see something different. That’s what (Mortimer) really likes.”
White Wave Dance’s SoloDuo Dance Festival celebrates the unique art of the solo and duet — formats often favored by early-stage choreographers as their companies begin to find their paths within the dance world. The program Mortimer is participating in includes choreographers from around the U.S.; and from countries like England, Israel, Italy, Mexico and Switzerland.
“I'm still trying to wrap my head around it because it is a big festival and a big opportunity,” Weber-Mortimer said.
The dance itself begins with Mortimer miming out actions a desk job worker would perform at work, before she appears to get frustrated, mimes slamming a book closed and getting up from her seat. While some might not describe her actions in the piece as typical dance moves, Mortimer said she wanted to perform interpretive actions that, to her, represent feelings in a physical form.
“It's more abstract,” Mortimer said. “My hands shaking as I reach toward the ceiling. I do different movements from my chest.”
Mortimer originally choreographed the piece as the final project for a class at SRU she took in the spring of 2024 and entered it into the dance festival after receiving encouragement about its quality. Choreographing the piece was “a lengthy process,” which was multiplied by the time it took to create a performance website complete with a bio, photos and contact information — all requirements for applying to the festival.
Even after all that work, Mortimer and Weber-Mortimer almost missed the acceptance letter.
“It was months of ‘Did I make it, did I not make it?’” Mortimer said. “The letter itself ended up in my junk box.”
Even though her dancing career has taken Mortimer to New York City and to Las Vegas, Nev. Mortimer said the size of the festival and the people performing there has gotten to her a bit. Nevertheless, Mortimer said dancing in the festival is a dream come true and could be a big step to take her further in her dance career down the road.
“I am nervous because it would be a dream to live in New York City someday,” Mortimer said. “There’s some pressure, but I love having some pressure.”
