Laura Biagi 

• Laura Biagi was born in Siena, Italy. She grew up among olive trees, cypresses, grapevines and the ritual of Palio. A traveler and researcher, Laura lives in the in-betweens of cultures, languages, time and space. Her pact with her-Self and Community is to comprehend and share. Her source of inspiration is Love. Her media are sacred sound and movement. She researches and practices the healing properties of sound, particularly through the voice, and the integration of art and science for the purpose of well-being.
  
• Laura is currently living in the Ananda Ashram, near Pondicherry, in South-East India, where she is part of a Six Months Yoga Teacher Training at the Internation Center for Yoga Education and Research (ICYER).  She is studying Rishiculture Ashtanga Yoga with eminent teachers Yogacharini Meenakshi Devi Bhavanani and Yogacharia Dr. Ananda Bhavanani.
  
• In May 2009 Laura earned a Sound Healer Certification from the New York Open Center Sound and Music Institute in New York City, with a focus on folk medicine and vocal sound healing.
• In the fall of 2008 Laura Biagi was invited to join the faculty at Vassar College, in New York, where she  worked as a Visiting Professor in the Italian Department until May 2009. At Vassar College, Laura continued her multimodal approach to pedagogy, integrating theory with music, dance, drawing and storytelling. During her term at Vassar, Laura received an Andrew Mellon Award and a Carolyn Grant Award for the study of the Expressive Arts and the Human Imagination.
• In the spring of 2008 Laura became a certified tour guide for the city of Florence, specializing in the relationship between art and science in Renaissance Florence.
• In 2007 Laura began teaching at the university level and created a multimodal course on Italian folklore which involved theory and practice of folk music and dance for New York University in Florence where she taught in the academic year 2007-2008.
• In 2006, her first CD,ARIA, was released. It contains four Italian folk songs, an original composition, a spiritual, and a re-arrangement of Pink Floyd's Echoes.
• In Italy Laura studied folk singing with Giovanna Marini and did extensive fieldwork research in the region of Apulia where she trained in tarantella dance.
• In 2004, after a three-year apprenticeship, she was ordained a Minister in the Ministry of Maat, an interfaith ministry that supports the study and research in women's mysteries and all creative work.
• In 1997, after graduating from the University of Siena  with honors she was first to hold a position of Language Fellow at Vassar College, where she lived for one year while studying music and dance. In 1998, she moved to New York City where she earned a Master of Art and a Ph.D. (2004) from the Department of Performance Studies at New York University, studying under the supervision of Professor Richard Schechner. Laura Biagi's dissertation is on the relationship between ritual, art and healing in Apulian tarantismo and tarantella. While in NYC she also studied singing and performance composition with Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Denise Stoklos, and Augusto Boal and performed concerts and performance art pieces at Judson Church, LaMama Theatre, New York University, Vassar College, and the Gallery at Deep Listening Space.