Dance Center and Columbia College Chicago alum Lauren Warnecke, Critic, interviews her fellow alum and Dance Presenting Series artist Erin Kilmurray (Dance, 2008), recognized as ‘Chicagoan of the Year in Dance’ by the the Chicago Tribune. The feature highlights Kilmurray’s piece with Kara Brody, Knockout, which premiered at the Dance Center in April 2024 as part of our Chicago Artist Spotlight Festival.
Erin Kilmurray, photo by E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune.
Warnecke writes:
…As her career has evolved, Kilmurray hasn’t needed to be as scrappy as in the beginning, but she’s stayed firm to a set of values. Among the non-negotiables is an ensemble of collaborators whom she gets to know as artists and human beings. She’s not a solo artist and never has been, she said. And working that way takes time.
‘I’ve always been energized by the question and the wonder of what the group can do, and what we’re going to do together . I love facilitating that practice,’ Kilmurray said. “‘ don’t set out with the goal of getting to that presentation place in mind, ever .’
But she does get to it, eventually, as any “Fly Honey” audience member picking glitter out of their hair days later can attest. The lights, the sound, the music, the vibe — the product — are as important to her as the journey it took to get there.
‘The audience feels like a collaborator to me — maybe not in the studio, but in the live-ness of performing something and getting that exchange,’ she said.
“The audience feels like a collaborator to me — maybe not in the studio, but in the live-ness of performing something and getting that exchange.”
‘Knockout,’ a tour de force performed in January at Steppenwolf Theatre, performed in January at Steppenwolf Theatre [originally seen in an earlier iteration at the Dance Center], could well be the perfect example of that duality between process and product. The project started as danced scribblings with co-choreographer The project started as danced scribblings with co-choreographer Kara Brody during the pandemic, anathema to virtual hangouts and our collective ineptitude at navigating the messiness of meeting people. After several years and many, many iterations, which came to include critical contributions from sound designer Corey Smith and lighting designer Liz Gomez, it was, hands down, among the best dance this year .
The article goes on to describe her formative mentors at Columbia College Chicago:
“Peter Carpenter , Gesel Mason and Colleen Halloran were instructive mentors, providing physical and philosophical avenues to creatively transgress the lines between so-called “high art” and her interest in nightlife and club culture. But it was Kilmurray and her peers who pioneered subversive grassroots models and performance platforms like Beauty Bar . They converted warehouses and lofts, one of which — a literal open space in Wicker Park rented for the first time by the Open Space Project — is now The Den Theatre, where the “Fly Honey Show” performed for several years before moving to its final home at Thalia Hall.
And with “Fly Honey” now gone, Kilmurray can get back to basics, spending time in the studio, collecting her curio cabinet of ideas and collaborators. Making what? She’s not sure yet. That’s kind of her thing…”
Read the full article in the Chicago Tribune.
Top banner photo: Erin Kilmurray and Kara Brody in Knockout, at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, photo by: Julie Lucas for Columbia College, Chicago.
