KELLY ANDERSON is the Artistic Director of Chicago-based, Milwaukee-led, performance company Kelly Anderson Dance Theatre (KADT). Anderson’s most recent work, WEALTHcare: “an episode,” premiered in February 2025 at Color Club Chicago as part of the split bill, Side Effects and Smoking Meat, with Project Bound Dance. KADT evening-length works include: THE END IS HERE and that's ok., presented in Links Hall's 40th Anniversary Season, Skits and Pieces, presented in Steppenwolf's LookOut Series, "In Sarah's Shadow: The Eleonora Duse Story,” a co-creation with NOLA based Writer/Director Olivia Lilley at Prop Thtr, “Livin’ the Dream,” VAUDEVILLE!, and the Chicago company debut, Message Me If…, in 2014. Additionally, Anderson was awarded a Co-MISSION through Links Hall in 2020 for Diary of a Dancing Grannie. Prior to her Chicago debut, Anderson's most notable works include: two solo shows with Danceworks MKE (Milwaukee, WI), Vaudeville and The Bra Project, and the co-creations of this is how we disappear and The Little Things with Portland-based performance company bobbevy, and the original dance/theatre/opera, 26, with Milwaukee Opera Theatre. Her work has been presented and commissioned in Chicago, NYC, Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Portland, OR. Anderson is a former company member of Gerald Casel Dance (NYC), bobbevy (Portland, OR), and the Milwaukee companies or Danceworks MKE, Wild Space Dance Company, Your Mother Dances, and Foothold Dance Performance. Additional independent professional performance credits include: Melinda Jean Myers, Janet Lilly, Ed Burgess, Simone Ferro, Sarah Wilbur, Sean Curran, Heidi Latsky, Amii Legendre, Anthony Lyons, and We Stand Sideways Dance. Anderson is the Founder and Director of the Midwestern dance festival Death's Door Dance Festival in Door County, WI and has been awarded the Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship (DGSF) for her 2025-2026 MFA candidacy at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. 

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Banner Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis
Headshot: xoMe studio