I’m a Canadian-born, U.S.-based choreographer and dancer, educator, thinker, and writer about movement, body, and healing.

I make dances.

My professional home and hub is Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak: a small, Chicago-based organization that supports my dance making and teaching through shared creative processes, mostly with the ensemble of dance artists and Spiral Body Techniques® teachers affiliated with the company.

We prioritize deep exploration of movement and inquiry into what human experience and response drives our movement choices, especially within the phenomenon of being seen.

Spiral Body Techniques is central to that work. Over more than two decades, I’ve developed SBT as a practice-based methodology grounded in the intelligence of the material body. Its foundations include attention to ball-and-socket joint relationships, undulation as a source of rhythm and timing, the release and reeducation of the abdominal muscles, and the coexistence of complex spiralic patterns that support both virtuosity and humane movement choices. SBT challenges traditional dance hierarchies and rigid or binarized frameworks of identity by encouraging the intelligence of body in all bodies, and by fostering compassionate, non-coercive relationships between dancers, observers, and environments. The practice is a discipline in service to living more humane lives.

I earned a PhD (2019) in Dance from Temple University (Philadelphia, PA), mentored by Dr. Karen E. Bond. The PhD process and personal transformations deepened work with my Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak collaborators. Reckoning with academia has focused my current intentions:

– continue to create and present work,

– offer regular and robust opportunities for students and teachers through formalizing Spiral Body Techniques®, and

– increase focus on writing about rape culture, hush culture, and (related) fear of body as these phenomena inform the way humans move, see one another, and consider power.

I’m fortunate to be seen by my communities in stages of personal and professional transformation, risk, and change. My choreographic work has received positive critical acclaim and audience response, and is funded by grant awards and fellowships. I'm recognized as a "singular voice in Chicago dance" (TimeOut Chicago) who has been "distilling the essence of performance—the relationship between audience and artist—for years, exposing the honest beauty of the body in its natural state: fluid, organic motion" (New City Chicago).

Our current ensemble project is Ex/Body, a multi-year, multi-iterative choreographic project exploring the body’s response to trauma. The first work in the series premiered in Chicago in 2019, with subsequent dance films in 2021 and 2022. The most recent live iteration is the ensemble piece Ex/Body: strike, vibrate, shatter, which premiered in Chicago in October 2023, and the forthcoming Ex/Body: de/fame, de/position, de/liberate, which premiers December 19-21, 2025.

I find clarity and connection through writing that blends autobiography with theory, embodied and critical. I was productively challenged by creating an archive for and then writing my dissertation focusing on, unpacking, and theorizing my solo project My Name is a Blackbird. A piece of writing inspired by that project, the article “My Name is a Blackbird: release, transparency, agency,” was awarded the inaugural Linda Rolfe New Writers Prize by Research in Dance Education.

pic by Lady Red Photos.