All About Kathleen Dyer

Kathleen Dyer has choreographed extensively for the past fifteen years, creating twenty-two repertory works and four powerful evening-length pieces for her company, KDNY, and four pieces for university dance programs and other dance companies. Her energetic and technically specific work explores dance’s capacity to communicate both literal and metaphorical meanings simultaneously and is therefore accessible to dance aficionados as well as mainstream audiences.

Dyer began her dance career in Alabama where she danced and choreographed for the Huntsville Community Ballet and the School for the Performing Arts. Later, she attended Florida State University in Tallahassee via scholarship, earning her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Dance. After graduation and while continuing to pursue her own choreography, Kathleen danced with several New York dance companies.

Over the past decade, Dyer’s work has received a number of accolades including critical notice by the press and selection for presentation by prestigious performing arts festivals. Her company, KDNY, in addition to its annual New York season, performed at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Fringe Festival of Independent Artists in Canada, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Her creative accomplishments were acknowledged with an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts and the Choreography Award from the Panoply Festival of the Arts in Alabama for her work Escape in Blue #32.

Dyer’s pursuit of dance is a distinctly communal act. Her works are primarily group works, and she has created several projects to develop female partnerships. Her goals are to inspire physical and emotional empowerment through movement, and to gain a greater understanding of the female psyche as it presents itself physically. While on tour she offers community-based workshops, which are developed around her movement vocabulary or KDNY repertory, and adapted to suit the specific participant population. She has given master classes, repertory workshops, and lecture demonstrations in a number of states including Texas, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Florida. She is also interested the bringing dance to younger audiences through school performances, open rehearsals, and new dance comedies choreographed specifically for youthful imaginations. Ms. Dyer’s choreography has been restaged on regional companies around the country including the Huntsville Ballet of Alabama and Moving Current of Tampa, FL. Currently, she is pursuing opportunities to restage Navigating the Hallway on other companies in Florida and Texas.

"Dyer's sense of humor infected "East Whistwaddle Ladies" most thoroughly. In tiny sharp movement - like little shakes of the head - Dyer brims with personality." Clare Croft, The Washington Post