Lauren Ashlee Messina on Dance, Community, and Creative Confidence

In this episode of The Truth In This Art, host Rob Lee welcomes back Lauren Ashlee Messina for a returning visit to the podcast!

About Lauren Ashlee Messina: Award-winning choreographer and community builder based in New Orleans, founder of skool.com/dance — the original and largest multi-style dance community on the Skool platform — and a longtime connector of dancers to one another and to resources.

Lauren returns to the podcast and reintroduces herself and her work for new listeners, catching Rob up on where life has taken her since they last sat down together in person — including nearly nine years now rooted in New Orleans after growing up in Springfield, Illinois.

We get into her work as a choreographer, from acclaimed presentations at the New York Jazz Choreography Project and 92nd Street Y to performing arts residencies at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans and the New Orleans Museum of Art, and how she continues to make site-specific and outdoor work a central part of her practice.

Messina also opens up about the origins of skool.com/dance — tracing the idea all the way back to a grad school vision of building an app to connect dancers in graduate programs — and how finding the Skool platform finally gave her the container she needed to make that community real. She reflects on how the group has evolved over the years and what it means to build a space where dancers of all levels can find connection, resources, and room to grow.

She also speaks honestly about what it costs to be a dancer — financially, physically, and in terms of time and sacrifice — and shares her perspective on self-belief: not as something that arrives with certainty, but as something built by pushing through failure, again and again.

Be sure to connect with Lauren Ashlee Messina on Instagram and YouTube at Lauren Ashlee Messina, and find her dance community at skool.com/dance.

Photo courtesy of subject

The Truth In This Art is supported by William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, the Maryland State Arts Council's Creativity Grant and Mayor's Individual Artist Award - Creative Baltimore Fund (Baltimore).

Host: Rob Lee

Music: Original music by Daniel Alexis Music with additional music from Chipzard and TeTresSeis.

Production: