Erin Flynn

Erin Flynn is a Montreal-based dance artist. A choreographer, educator, and movement researcher with over twenty years of professional experience in performance, creation, and pedagogy across Canada and internationally. Her artistic practice bridges contemporary dance, somatic research, improvisation, functional movement training, theatre, and performance, with close collaboration with music, video and visual art. Flynn creates visceral, perceptual, and symbolic works that examine emotional states, collective experience, and contemporary conditions.

Interested in the intersection between consciousness, culture and the body, Erin creates human portraits that move between the absurd, the cathartic, and the intimate. Her work embraces hybridity and rigorous physical investigation to create immersive audience experiences that are at once cutting, comical, and emotionally charged. She is interested in creating performances that destabilize perception while inviting empathy, reflection, and collective recognition.

As a performer, Erin has performed throughout Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Twith renowned companies including Van Grimde Corps Secrets, Montreal Danse, Public Recordings, Ruth Cansfield Dance, Trip Dance, Le Groupe de la Place Royale and Tusket Dance, as well as choreographers Thea Patterson, Victoria May, Hinda Essadiqi, Lynn Snelling, AndrewTay/Sasha Kleinplatz and Ame Henderson. Her choreographic works have been presented by Tangente, les Maisons de la Culture, Dance X, and New Dance Horizons, and have been performed through Montreal, Canada, and in Tokyo and Seoul.

Erin currently teaches in the School of Performance at Concordia University, at the National Theatre School of Canada and Studio 303. She has also taught at Université du Québec à Montréal, the Winnipeg School of Contemporary Dancers, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.

Teaching: Contemporary Technique, Improvisation, Choreography: Collaborative practices, Composition, Dramaturgy; Interpretation, Somatic Techniques, Pilates & Functional Movement & Anatomy

Erin Flynn’s pedagogy integrates embodied research practices drawn from contemporary dance, physical theatre, somatics, and movement and musical improvisation and composition techniques. She is interested in cultivating creative environments that support rigorous inquiry, collaboration, embodied awareness, and sustainable artistic practices that both communicate with and challenge audiences. Her teaching emphasizes deep investigation alongside care, creating spaces where artists can develop, refine, and communicate their ideas with curiosity, trust, and critical engagement.

Her hybrid approach is informed by diverse influences including facilitation practices from activist spaces and Indigenous knowledge systems, ecology, dance science and neurophysiology, phenomenology, ecofeminism, sport periodization, and devising methodologies from theatre and experimental music practices.

Erin’s artistic and academic research exists at the intersection of physical practice and creative process. Her classes function as exploratory spaces where participants investigate, refine, and communicate embodied sensation in dialogue with others, the environment, and performance.

Classes often begin with a thematic physical warm-up that develops strength, stamina, alignment, coordination, and sensory awareness. Structured movement sequences build range of motion, stabilization, fluid transitions, and an expanded relationship to weight, rhythm, and perception. Improvisational scores explore physical and perceptual states while cultivating creative and compositional tools.

Discussions around readings, praxis, and thematic inquiry, alongside partner and small-group explorations, encourage interpersonal exchange and critical feedback practices rooted in observation, reflection, and communication. Classes often close with reflective and somatic practices that support recuperation, integration, and the assimilation of experiential knowledge.

Thesis: Iterations - Artistic Periodization for Sustainable Creation

Abstract

Iterations, researched incorporating periodized training, documentation, and communication tools into a rehearsal creation. 

The artistic goal of the project was to create and film a live dance work incarnating multidimensional femme archetypes, using a hybrid choreographic language modulated by improvisational tools. The strategies tested in this research creation aimed to generate intertwined interpretive and physical abilities to achieve performative goals. A multifaceted movement training praxis created a departure point for the work. This practice was used to

generate material inside of rehearsals and parameters for improvisations. Rehearsal activities were scheduled using non-linear Periodization and Tapering, that modulated intensity and duration to create time and space for recuperation,

integration, and problem-solving inside of the creative process. Devising techniques, discussions, and documentation were also incorporated to facilitate transparent communication and collaboration around relational interactions and artistic decision-making. 

This study found that including progressive training and communication practices inside of a rehearsal process was effective in facilitating dancers’ work and creating a collaborative environment. It concluded that some aspects of sports and theatre models have potential but need to be adapted to the specific challenges of dance performance, such as memory and stamina.

Approches destinées à cultiver les sensations et la conscience - Pratiques en structures ouvertes dans l'êntrainement de danse contemporaine

Bienaise, J., Levac, M., & Collectif, C. (2024). Partager la Danse.Les Presses de l’Université Laval. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=31747687

Iterations : artistic periodization towards sustainable creation

Territoires Partagés - Podcast avec Accompagnateurs de classes / Erin Flynn

https://soundcloud.com/tpdanse/accompagnateurs-de-classes

Territoires Partagés Podcast-avec-6-artistes-enseignantes-covid-19 / Erin Flynn

https://soundcloud.com/tpdanse/podcast-avec-6-artistes-enseignantes-covid-19

Territoires Partagés -Podcast-james-viveiros

https://soundcloud.com/tpdanse/podcast-james-viveiros

Something Just Might Happen - Collaboration in Choreographic Practices

https://vimeo.com/1066409828/e9615a8b52?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Espace Blanc Residency 2024

https://vimeo.com/1101621070/5a71d2922b?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Iterations

https://vimeo.com/534432975?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Iterations Duet

https://vimeo.com/650885970?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Catalyseur - LocalMotion Lab - La Salle Rouge - Wilder

Catalyseur with Erin Flynn & Mairéad Filgate
https://vimeo.com/330804935

Healthy Dancer Canada Presentation -Rethinking Rehearsal

https://vimeo.com/641645127/376b71d52c?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Forward Back - Dance film by Mistaya Hemingway

https://www.ladistributrice.ca/en/films/forward-back