Kalila Kingsford Smith Dance is a project-based collection of dancer-artists who build interactive environments in which the dance crosses the perceived boundaries between audience and performer. Each dance is a product of the creative energies of all involved; the performers, the creative collaborators, and the audience.
Philadelphia native Kalila Kingsford Smith is an independent choreographer, performer, and dance educator. She has performed in the works of Dianne McIntyre, Paul Taylor, Mary Anthony, José Limón, Pauline Koner, Gwendolyn Bye, Stephen Welsh, and other local dance artists. Informed by her training in modern and contemporary dance, her choreography flows between tension and release, momentum and suspension, improvisation and composition, and storytelling and abstraction. Her choreography has been presented throughout Philadelphia, including at Leah Stein’s Studio Works, the Come Together Festival, the Fringe Festival, SoLow Fest, and InHale Performance Series. As a dance educator at Temple and Drexel University, she teaches courses in modern dance technique, improvisation, choreography, dance history and theory. Kalila is also a writer and editor with thINKingDANCE.net. Kalila received her MA in Dance from Temple University, a BFA in Dance and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.