Kate Hilliard

Kate Hilliard is a Toronto based artist. She has performed with Le Groupe Dance Lab, The Margie Gillis Dance Foundation, Fortier Danse-Création and was a company member of Dancemakers for five years. After performing Tino Sehgal’s work in several international galleries, Hilliard broke from dance practice to pursue curatorial work with a focus in contemporary performance and visual art. She is the Creative Director at The Orillia Centre for Arts + Culture, fostering programming and residency opportunities for artists across disciplines. Kate’s passion for creative process influences her training philosophy. Over the years she has cultivated a teaching practice in her own community and in several institutions, including The Stella Adler Studio of Acting in NYC. Kate has instructed at Toronto Metropolitan University since 2015 and is dedicated to nurturing students in their creative work. Her own choreography has been commissioned and presented in Canada, the USA, Mexico, and Berlin. Kate’s performance research blends highly codified gestural movement language with improvisation. Her choreographic structures include spoken word and digital media. At the centre of each choreographic body, Hilliard aims to comment on the experiences that we share in relationship to the passing of time. Her 2020 premiere “this happened…” was nominated for a The Dora Mavor Moore Award for “Best Original Choreography”. Hilliard studied Art History at The University of Toronto and holds an MFA in Creative Practice from Plymouth University’s Transart Institute in the UK.