Molly Shanahan, PhD.

Molly Shanahan was born in Windsor, Ontario, raised in Goderich, Ontario and Detroit, studied in Ohio, and has made Chicago her creative home since 1994, when she founded Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak—an ensemble of dancers, thinkers, and mostly-introverted embodied researchers. Over the last fifteen years she has developed and formalized Spiral Body Techniques®, launching its first annual teacher-certification cohort in 2023, a long-held dream realized.

Critics have described Shanahan as “a singular voice in Chicago dance” (Zac Whittenburg, TimeOut Chicago) whose work “distill[s] the essence of performance—the relationship between audience and artist—exposing the honest beauty of the body in its natural state: fluid, organic motion” (Sharon Hoyer, Newcity Chicago).

Her work has been supported, among other sources, by a 2010 Arts Achievement Award from the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Charitable Foundation; a 2019 Fellowship at the Bogliasco Study Center for the Arts and Humanities; the 2020 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program; two National Performance Network Creation Fund Awards; a 2006 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award; an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for choreography; a MAP Fund semifinalist award; and the inaugural Linda Rolfe Prize for New Writers from the Journal of Dance Education. She also participated in the prestigious 2016 Regional Dance Development Initiative, sponsored by Chicago Dancemakers Forum and the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts.

In 2012, after several years as a full-time lecturer in the Dance Program at Northwestern University, Shanahan received a Presidential Fellowship from Temple University to pursue her PhD in Dance, which she completed in 2019 under the mentorship of Dr. Karen Bond. She has taught at numerous universities as faculty, visiting professor, guest artist, and lecturer, and through residencies with Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak—including the signature Process to Performance workshops at Purdue University (2022) and Northwestern University (2023).

Alongside her creative work and the expansion of Spiral Body Techniques®, Shanahan is engaged in national advocacy to end the misuse of non-disclosure agreements in higher education through the grassroots campaign she co-founded, NDAFreeCampus. As a survivor living with PTSD, and having spent recent years confronting harmful institutional systems, she has gained a sharpened understanding of what humane structures of learning require and what they make possible. These experiences continue to shape how she understands vulnerability and power; how essential, and risky, it is to challenge harmful systems; and the role that embodiment, creativity, and ethical care in teaching and performance communities play in countering abuses of power.

pic by Lady Red Photos.