Lorin Johnson trained at the Pacific Dance Theatre before becoming a full-scholarship student at the San Francisco Ballet School. He trained with such influential teachers as: Richard Gibson, Yehuda Maor, Tina Santos, Daniel Simmons, Larisa Sklyanskaya, Helen Coope, Henry Berg, Richard Cammack, Zola Dishong, Christine Bering, and Anatole Vilzak. Johnson danced with the San Francisco Ballet from 1986-1987 before joining the American Ballet Theatre in New York under the directorship of Mikhail Baryshnikov. Johnson performed at ABT until 1995, appearing in eight seasons at the Metropolitan Opera House, touring nationally and internationally and performing in “Live from Lincoln Center” television broadcasts. Johnson created original roles in ballets by such renowned choreographers as Ulysses Dove, Clark Tippet and Agnes DeMille, among others. He has worked with some of the 20th century’s most renowned choreographers, including Glen Tetley, Kenneth Macmillan, Twyla Tharp, and Jerome Robbins.
Johnson's choreographic work has been described as "dynamic" and "electrifying" and has seen both in the US and abroad. He has been commissioned to create works for dance companies including South Bay Ballet, Ventura County Ballet, and Festival Ballet Theatre, among others. His work has been presented in national and international dance festivals, including: the Fabbrica Europa Dance Festival in Florence, Italy; Celebrate Dance 2010 in Los Angeles; the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Invitational Dance Festival at OCPAC; the Laguna Dance Festival, directed by Jodie Gates; SOLA, directed by Regina Klenjoski; the Dance Under the Stars Choreography Festival in Palm Springs, and the Los Angeles Dance Invitational at the Ford Amphitheater. He has been artist in residence at such universities as Skidmore College, New York, and at the Orange County High School of the Arts (OCHSA) in Southern California. Johnson has worked in opera and with live symphony orchestra, choreographing the full-length opera L'Orfeo for the CSULB Opera Institute and creating an original interpretation of Beethoven's The Creatures of Prometheus for the New West Symphony .In 2003, Danza & Danza wrote that Johnson's premiere for the Fabbrica Europa Dance Festival, Moto-Bio: Bodies in Movement, was “a work of extraordinary interest,” and the Glendale News Press stated that Johnson's work, My Breath Comes Differently, was "the best performance" in Celebrate Dance 2010.
In 2009, Johnson founded Body Current Dance (www.bodycurrent.org), a contemporary dance company based in Southern California. Johnson is currently an Associate Professor in the Dance Department at California State University, Long Beach, where he teaches courses in ballet technique, composition and history, as well as choreographing for and directing department concerts. His writings on dance have been published in Dance International and Dance Teacher magazines, as well as in the peer-reviewed journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training (Routledge) and in Experiment and Musyka. Johnson has been a guest pre-performance speaker at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Los Angeles Music Center, as well as presenting papers at international conferences such as the Congress on Research in Dance. In 2013, Johnson is serving as the Artistic Advisor to the Music Center in Los Angeles. He has B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Southern California.
Photo of Lorin Johnson by Gregory R. R. Crosby
Photo in graphic by Marc Rouyer
