About

Lily Kind is a critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, producer, and writer based in Philly & London. Lily's movement languages include contemporary dance, clown, waacking, locking, and vernacular jazz.

Lily’s work has been presented by Breaking Walls Festival (Cairo, Egypt), Philadelphia Dance Projects, Table Gallery (Chicago), Miami Light Project, Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company, Le Mondo (Baltimore), Creative Alliance (Baltimore), The Baltimore Museum of Art, Princeton University, Concord Academy, and Ursinus College. Lily self-produced her own work as the founder of Effervescent Collective in Baltimore, Maryland – gaining recognition as Best Choreographer, (Baltimore Magazine, 2014) Best Dance Company (Baltimore City Paper, 2010, 2012, Baltimore Magazine, 2012) and winning a Baker Artist Award ‘B’ Grant, 2011. She has also produced multiple iterations of her critically acclaimed show Wolfthicket, 2016 to present.

Lily has provided movement direction for Play Co, NYC, The Baltimore Rock Opera, Annex Theater, and Single Carrot Theater. She has performed in Philly with Chelsea Murphy, Magda San Millan, Andrew Simonet, Mark "Metal" Wong, Mystique, and The Medium Theater Company. She has choreographed music videos for Bosley, Carsie Blanton, Sianna Plavin, and appeared in music videos for Dan Deacon, Dungeonesse, Echoes, and Hard Work Movement.

2017-2020 Lily helped Vince Johnson operate Urban Movement Arts (UMA) in downtown Philly, where she also ran an Artists in Residence program and the works in progress series Workinonit, which informed the development of her DIY production ‘zine ‘How To Make A Dance In America.’ At UMA, Lily also trained with The Hood Lockers and Ron Wood. As a vernacular jazz dancer, she trained with Breai Mason-Campbell’s Guardian Baltimore (now Moving History), as a guest of The Jazz Maniacs (Brussels) in 2019, and was an invited participant in Melanie George’s Woodshed in 2022. Lily co-founded Ragtag Empire in 2016, and served as co-director until 2023. In 2024, Lily joined the London chapter of the House of Suraj, led by Kumair Suraj.

Lily is an ambassador of Flying Low & Passing Through, the methods of David Zambrano, in which she has trained intensively with both Zambrano & Milan Herich in Thailand, Costa Rica, Mexico, and as a participant in The 60 Days Project in Brussels, Belgium. Lily has taught workshops at Tulane University, Muhlenberg College, California Institute of the Arts, Bryn Mawr College, Temple University, and Haverford College. She has served as an adjunct professor at Ursinus College and Marymount Manhattan College.She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Goucher College, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts with a concentration in Afro-Diasporic Studies from Goddard College, and a certificate from Headlong Dance Theater. Her dance writing can be found at Culturebot, thinkingDance, Phindie, and ArtBlog and her “pandemic” podcast with Mel Cotton, called Tracing Steps. In 2023 Lily joined the faculty of De Montfort University of Leicester, outside London, England.