Erin Kilmurray (she/they) is a Chicago-based dance artist creating genre-straddling, femme-forward, pop-fringe performance worlds that demand aliveness and collectivity on stage, in the studio, and with audiences. She facilitates a practice 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 founder + chief visionary of legendary, all-body-loving, variety performance project, The Fly Honey Show (est. 2010), called a "Chicago institution" (Chicago Reader).
Erin thinks across dance forms, performance environments, and the art of gathering; described as a “choreographic alchemist” who “pours from her career-long commitment to surfacing the underground, formalizing the informal, breaking norms and pushing at performers’ and audiences” (Chicago Tribune.)
She is recognized with a 2024 US Artists Fellowship in Dance, 2023 Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, 2023 Links Hall Co-Mission Fellowship, 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Lab Artist, 2023’s “one of 50 People Who Really Perform for Chicago” (Newcity) and as a finalist for Walder Foundation’s inaugural 2023 Platform Awards.
Her work has been shown in nationally celebrated performance spaces (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago), iconic music venues (Thalia Hall, Metro), nightclubs (Berlin, Empty Bottle, Beauty Bar), experimental art houses (Links Hall), festivals (Lollapalooza, Philadelphia Fringe, Pivot Arts), toured internationally (art-Theatre Dancebox NPO - Kobe, Japan), commissioned by academic institutions (Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Beloit College) with creative resource support from Lucky Plush Productions, The Harris Theater for Music and Dance, High Concept Labs, Ragdale Foundation (IL), Vashon Island Artists Residency (WA) and The Field Center for Performance, Dance, Interdisciplinary Art (VT). Her choreographic collaborations and performances have been featured in countless underground spaces and for independent makers, parties, concerts, music videos, and theatrical productions. She teaches at Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and has guest taught at Oberlin College, Beloit College, Ball State, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Loyola University, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, and University of Wisconsin.