While Lila Ruth Klaus was growing up in Washington DC, her exposure to both dance and a strong Jewish upbringing led her to exploring the intersections of dance and religious practice, an interest she still investigates to this day. While training and performing in DC, she was able to perform in venues such as The Kennedy Center, the White House, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and on television for PBS. She received a scholarship from the Trawick foundation in 2008, and was a member of the Joy of Motion Youth Dance Ensemble, which received the Metro DC Dance award for Best Youth Performance in 2013. In addition to presenting her choreography in DC, she has attended and shown work at Bates Dance Festival, the American Dance Festival where she was a scholarship student twice, in Sitka, Alaska where she also assistant taught dance, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. In Boston, she has shown work at Arts at the the Armory in Somerville, and The Foundry in Cambridge. She received her BA in dance with a concentration in theology from Bard College, where she performed in the works of Trisha Brown both in the Richard B. Fisher Center and in New York City, during the Bard College/Trisha Brown Dance company partnership. In Boston she has performed at Hibernian Hall in Dorchester, Arts at the Armory in Somerville, The Foundry in Cambridge, and Salem Arts Festival in Salem. In addition, she developed curriculum for dance and prayer at Temple Beth Shalom in Needham MA. In 2017, her solo The Weight of Our Bones was accepted into the American College Dance Festival Northeast Gala. Lila was a part of Dance Complex's 2022 aMaSSiT cohort. She currently serves at the Dance Arts Mentor for the URJ 6 Points Creative Arts Academy summer camp in West Chester, PA.
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