“My dance work lives at a place where social environments, contemporary performance forms, and dancing collide. With an aesthetic orientation that sits on a pop-fringe borderline, my work is born from house parties, mosh pits, spectacle, music videos, nightlife, and dance teams.”
Erin Kilmurray is a Chicago-based dance artist creating genre-straddling, femme-forward performance works that demand aliveness and collectivity on stage, in the studio, and with audiences. Kilmurray’s practice is held up by collaboration and space-making that relentlessly explores the celebrations and liberations of women, queer folks, the underground, and the underdog. She is the chief visionary of legendary body-loving, variety performance project, The Fly Honey Show. Established in 2010, The Fly Honey Show has been named a “Chicago institution” by the Chicago Reader.
Kilmurray thinks across dance forms, performance environments, and the relationships between performer and spectator. Her work has been described by Newcity as “Moving energy…you don’t so much watch her choreography with your eyes as feel it pulsate through flesh, tendon and bone.”
She is recognized with a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, 2023 Links Hall Co-Mission Fellowship, and a 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist. She has been named one of “50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago” by Newcity in 2023 and 2020, and was one of three artists commissioned for the inaugural Chicago Performs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2022. Additionally, Kilmurray’s work has been shown in art houses, house parties, nightclubs, iconic music venues, on screen, internationally, and in theatrical productions.