Lara Branen

Director of the Boulder Jazz Dance Workshop (BJDW) Lara Branen (Dance; MA’87) has been directing its workshops since the first session at the Chautauqua Community Hall in 1978 and has seen the group expand from fewer than 20 students to about 150. Lara, who lives in Northern California, flies into Boulder for a month to direct the workshop, which she says has developed a reputation as “a college-based summer dance study setting with heart.” The BJDW was started by Lara and Michael Geiger (MDance’78) and is still run mainly by CU alumni.