2025 LAB ARTIST

2019 GREENHOUSE ARTIST 

Keyierra Collins is an Afro-interdisciplinary dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist based in Chicago but recognized internationally. In 2020 she was awarded the 3Arts/ Walder Foundation Awardee grant. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2016 with a BA in Dance. She studied and apprenticed under the tutelage of educators and international performers, Onye Ozuzu (choreographer) & Dr. Raquel Monroe (writer). As a dance artist Collins has worked with artists like Chicago-based dancemaker and improvisationalist Aaliyah Christina as well as France-based Rwandan performance artist and vocalist Dorothee Munyaneza. She also has had the pleasure of working with many Chicago-based artists like Anna Martine Whitehead, Erin Kilmurray, and Jovan Landry, Sonita Surratt to name a few. Collins’ work lies at the intersection of exploring dance as healing and unpacking the collective and individual trauma experienced by people of the African Diaspora. Her process is kinesthetically driven and often inspired by conversations between peers and abstract reflections related to socio-political issues. Having toured and worked with artists in Haiti, Nigeria, and France, Collins is compelled to continue traveling to work with artists around the world and building spaces for her community. Alongside Brianna Alexis Heath, she co-founded Take Some Leave Some (TSLS): a multidisciplinary performance collective using sound, choreography, film, and installations to create experiences reflecting and celebrating Black women’s stories. TSLS creates experiences inside homes and neighborhood spaces on the Southside of Chicago to reference “home” as a kind of a communal safe space maintained by Black women’s resilient and unapologetic experiential knowledge.

Current Practice/Project: My dancemaking practice involves creating distinct worlds where dance and performance can thrive. Rooted in Afro-diasporic social and traditional dance practices, my movement is shaped by these cultural influences. Additionally, my experience and lineage as a Black woman deeply inform both my movement practice and the context of my work.