M.F.A., was Founder and Artistic Director of Core Project Chicago, a dance-based, interdisciplinary performing arts collective and is Founder and Executive Director of Side Street Studio Arts in her hometown of Elgin, IL. Core Project, 2006-2016, pushed the boundaries of storytelling through artistic collaboration with dramatic, sound, media and text artists and founded the Going Dutch Festival, a celebration of female and nonbinary voices in the arts. Erin earned a B.A. in Journalism from Western Illinois University, studied dance technique and choreography at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, where she was later hired the Director of Press and Marketing, and was a founding member of Kim Nofsinger’s Shelter Repertory Dance Theatre. She has performed the choreography of Stefanie Batten Bland and E.E. Balcos and has danced with several Chicago-based choreographers. Erin teaches and fuses multiple dance styles and has set work on dancers attending Bucknell University, WIU, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Southern Illinois Dance Center and Prep Dance School and in schools all over the Chicago area, including the Beverly Arts Center, where she directed the Summer Arts Experience-interdisciplinary arts camp. Her choreography has been produced around the United States and in China, and she has produced site-specific work throughout Illinois. Erin earned her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago in 2009, where she expanded her creative horizons by pursuing dance for the camera surrounding creative process and in live performance. She has been on faculty at Integrity School of Dance, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, and is currently Adjunct Faculty at Middle Tennessee State University (2009-present) and DancEd Dance Center in Northbrook, IL (2006-present). Erin was a 2010 recipient of a Chicago Cultural Center DanceBridge Residency, a 2011 and 2018 recipient of The Studios of Key West artist residency, and the recipient of the 2016 YWCA Elgin Margaret Hillis Award for the Arts. Since moving back to Elgin in 2012, she co-founded the Elgin Ties Dance Festival (2012-2014), was appointed to the Elgin Cultural Arts Commission of which she was Chairwoman in her final term (2013-2024), was a member of the Hemmens Cultural Center Task Force (2014-2015), and is Founder and Executive Director of the Elgin Fringe Festival. Recently, Erin was a founding member of the design team for the Grand Victoria Foundation's Elevating Equity grassroots grantmaking project (2018-present).
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