Laurie Eisenhower has enjoyed an impressive career as a performer, choreographer, teacher, director and producer of dance. Her work has been enthusiastically embraced by audiences throughout the United States and abroad. Raised in Arizona, she received her BAE and MFA degrees in dance from Arizona State University where she also received the Wanda and Rudy Turk Choreography Award and the Faculty Excellence Award. In the early years of her career, she danced professionally in both California and New York City with various dance companies and choreographers, most notably Pilobolus Dance Theatre, David Parsons, Chen and Dancers, Harry Streep III, and Mel Wong. Eisenhower began her professional choreographic career when she set a work for the Prospect Park Dance Festival in Brooklyn, NY. Since then, she has set her works on numerous professional dance companies including BalletMet Columbus, State Street Ballet, Desert Dance Theatre, Harbinger Dance Company, and the Pushkin Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia, to name a few.
In 1991, she formed Eisenhower Dance Detroit, which has become the premier dance company in the state of Michigan and tours internationally. Eisenhower has created over 100 dances for the Company and has received frequent grants and honors for her work. She has been awarded the Michigan Dance Association Choreographers Festival Award, the Women in Art Award for Choreography, Michigan’s Governor’s Arts Award for Outstanding Michigan Artist and the prestigious 2012 Kresge Artist Fellowship. Her work has also been supported through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, the Skillman Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the National Dance Project, and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Ms. Eisenhower is a former Dance Program Director and Professor of Dance at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. At OU, she was awarded a Travis Professorship, was honored twice by the OU Board of Trustees, and received the Faculty Recognition Award for her outstanding contributions in the field of dance. In 2012, she was appointed the status of Professor Emerita and, in 2016, was honored with the OU MaTilDa Award for Community Service. In the summer of 2017, she stepped down from the artistic leadership of Eisenhower Dance Detroit, concluding 26 years of artistic leadership with performances in Israel and Poland. Eisenhower Dance Detroit continues to thrive under the leadership of longtime colleague, Stephanie Pizzo.
Eisenhower has relocated to her home state of Arizona and is continuing to work as a choreographer. Her latest creative project is the creation of a YouTube channel, where she shares her passion for traveling: YouTube.com/@seniorsolotravel.