Kelly Keenan

Biography

Kelly is a Montreal based contemporary dance artist and teacher working in the field since 2001. Along with graduating from Les Ateliers de Danse Moderne de Montreal Kelly’s foundational training includes a 2 year apprenticeship in Brussels with mentor and originator of the Axis Syllabus, Frey Faust. 

Her fascination of the perceptive capacity of the body is reflected in both her teaching and artistic work. As a teacher her workshops are foremost concerned with the felt experience of dance with strong influences from somatics and manual therapy including the Axis Syllabus, Anatomy Trains, Feldenkrais, Material for the Spine among others. Kelly teaches regularly for pre-professional (Concordia & UQAM) and professional dance institutions offering continued training for professional dancers including Studio 303, le Régroupement Québécoise de la Danse, L’Artère (QC), The Toronto Love-In as well as abroad and grass-roots DIY workshops. 

As a performer Kelly has danced for several choreographers most recently including Hanna Sybille Müller, kg Guttman, Katie Ward and Adam Kinner.  Kelly's first choreographic works co-created and performed with Berliner Kira Kirsch, Species (2009) and Useless Creatures (2011) have been presented in Montreal, Toronto, Graz and San Francisco.  Her more recent choreographic work tackles the contradiction that dance, as a kinaesthetic practice, is generally performed for the spectator and accessed through the visual sense by creating dances that you “feel” rather than “see” and have taken different hybrid forms. A Practice (2013) in collaboration with Adam Kinner is both a workshop and a performance, Be Still & Know Me (2017) is a solo performance lecture and The Direction of Ease (2018), co-created with Jacinte Armstrong and Elise Vanderbourght explores the performativity of touch

Kelly’s commitment to the art of dancing has lead her into leadership roles in arts administration and event organization. She was the co-director of the North American Nomadic College from 2013-15. Kelly founded the Montreal Movement Educator's Forum in 2012 and is on Studio 303‘s board of directors.  Kelly is currently pursuing an MA in Concordia’s Individualized program at the hinge of dance studies, art education and sensory anthropology.