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Keyierra Collins headshot

Keyierra Collins

Dancer, Choreographer, Teacher

Keyierra Collins is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist working across dance, performance, installation, writing, and floral design. She is a 2025 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Awardee and a 2020 3Arts/Walder Foundation Awardee, with additional support from the Ignite Fund and the Camargo Foundation through the 3Arts Artist Partner Residency Program. Her work has also been recognized by Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Greenhouse Artist Award, the 3Arts Make A Wave Award, and the Integrity: Arts & Culture Association special anniversary award. Her collaborative practice with Take Some Leave Some has been supported through the Links Hall Co-MISSION Curators-In-Residence Program, the Pullman Laboring Together Award, and inclusion on the Creative Capital 2022 shortlist. Together, these recognitions reflect a practice rooted in experimentation, care, and cultural memory.

 

Collins holds a BA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago, where she studied with artists and scholars including Onye Ozuzu, Dr. Raquel Monroe, and Darrell Jones. Her early formation was shaped not only in the classroom but through community-based practice, including her work with Ayodele Drum & Dance under the direction of Ayo T. Alston, where she also served as an apprentice teacher. These experiences grounded her in Afro-diasporic movement traditions and a lineage of embodied knowledge that continues to inform her work.

 

Her artistic voice has been shaped through travel and exchange across France, Greece, Haiti, Nigeria, and Barbados. Moving through different landscapes, from the weight of humidity in the air to the rhythm of language, music, and daily ritual, she encountered a broader Afro-diasporic lens that continues to inform her practice. These experiences deepened her interest in world building and expanded her interdisciplinary approach, shaping how she moves between performance, installation, and research.

 

At the center of Collins’ practice is world building, an ongoing process of creating immersive, performative environments that hold space for reflection, ritual, and transformation. Within this practice, she is currently developing How I Found My Feet Again, a solo installation performance that explores healing, self-reclamation, and alignment through dance, spiritual practices, and matriarchal lineage. This ritualistic work delves into Black rest, care, and radical madness, while attending to the impact of racialized and misogynoir societal structures on Black femme folk. This approach to world building unfolds through what she calls DreamSpaces, living extensions of her artistic language that invite participants to slow down, to listen, and to reconnect. Inspired in part by the work of Tricia Hersey, these environments offer room to process personal and collective histories, commune with ancestral memory, and honor the lived experiences of Black women. Her work moves fluidly between the physical and the imagined, building worlds that hold both intimacy and expansiveness.

In 2019, Collins co-founded the performance collective Take Some Leave Some (TSLS) with artist and scholar Brianna Alexis Heath. Together, they create interactive performances that reimagine home as a shared, evolving space, one rooted in care, reciprocity, and the everyday brilliance of Black women’s lives.

 

Alongside her creative work, Collins serves as Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern University, where she teaches Afro Movement Aesthetics II and III. These courses explore Afro-diasporic dance concepts and movement practices, with a focus on deepening students’ technical skills, performance abilities, and relationship to music. Her approach to pedagogy mirrors her artistic practice, centering embodiment, cultural context, and the importance of making space for multiple ways of knowing.

 

Looking forward, Collins continues to expand her interdisciplinary work through installation, performance, and research, with a growing focus on developing a therapeutic movement practice rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions. Across all aspects of her work, she remains committed to creating spaces where healing, imagination, and resistance can coexist.

Keyierra Collins's Website
None The Shwang Out - TSLS 2023 photo by: Jovan Landry Apart of Links Hall's CO-Mission Curational Residency

Featured Artworks

  • Keyierra Collins artwork Take Rest Clara (you’ve been traveling through Heaven & Earth to meet me again & again) photo by: Julie Lucas, Location: The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago a part of Experiencing Time / Embodying Rhythm Symposium, The Dance Center of Columbia College, Chicago, IL. 2024
  • Keyierra Collins artwork Take Rest Clara (you’ve been traveling through Heaven & Earth to meet me again & again) photo by: Julie Lucas, Location: The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago a part of Experiencing Time / Embodying Rhythm Symposium, The Dance Center of Columbia College, Chicago, IL. 2024
  • dark skinned black woman face painted gold with gold flakes attached mouth wide open with a white and gold paper fan in her hand in a red suit standing next to another dark skinned black woman with a lavander suit on The Shwang Out: Take Some Leave Some photo by: Jovan Landry, Location Links Hall A part of Links Hall's 2023 CO-Misson Curational Residency
  • two dark skinned Black women squating down with their arms up in the air facing each other, one in a red suit and one in a lavendar suit, with their faces lightly painted gold, and flowers surrounding their feet The Shwang Out photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Links Hall , a part of their curators residency 2023 a work by Take Some Leave Some, co founded by Brianna Alexis Heath and myself.
  • black dark skin woman wearing a long sleeve black body suit under a tulle dress in front of a brick background with blue strips of fabric hanging behind her. HIFMFA: iin the finding photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Lawndale Pop-Up Shop, apart of Tectonic Black Summer Festival 2022 An excerpt from HIFMFA
  • Keyierra Collins artwork Tati's Buttah Joint: Take Some Leave Some photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Block House Gallery A part of Links Hall's CO-Misson Curational Residency
  • black woman with blue hair and a pale green floral stiched romper wit her face looking down at her hands lifted to her face standing in between two paths of pink, purple, and white flowers How I Found My Feet Again photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Columbia College Chicago Dance Center A part of Columbia College Dance Center 2022 Spark Plug comissioned programing
  • black dark skinned woman in dark green jumpsuit knealing down on a bed of pink, whit, and purple flowers, with a black camera on a tripod covered in green vines dancing in frontof a big screen projecting her image on the bach screen with purple lighting How I Found My Feet Again photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Columbia College Chicago Dance Center A part of Columbia College Dance Center 2022 Spark Plug comissioned programing
  • a lavendar paper dressed faceless femme figure in front of a projected image of a black dark skinned woman wearing a white paper dress and head piece with a installation table in from of it Love Offering photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Pullman Artspace Lofts apart of the Pullman Laboring Together performance series 2022 A work by my performance collective, Take Some Leave Some, cofounded by Brianna Alexis Heath and myself.
  • a dark skinned black woman in a green envelop thigh high dress and bare feet. On her head is a floral round flat top hat. behind her is a graphic purple flower and orange image, with a green leaf plant in the lower left corner. How I Found My Feet Again, a series of writings by Keyierra Collins photo and design: Keyierra Collins, Location: Pullman Chicago The first graphic image apart of my 6 part series with Performance Response Journal in response to my solo HIFHFA
  • a black dark skinned black woman wearing a pink paper top and floral pants surrounded by yellow flowers and text cut outs, in front of a dark green background, with the words NEW-phoric "i like these new blooms" NEW-phoric "i like these new blooms" image by: Keyierra Collins, published on Performance Response Journal a part of my published series on Performance Response Journal, in response to my solo How I Found My Feet Again, 2022
  • various people sitting in gold fabric colored seats facing a white wall with a video projection next to more people sitting on a greay couch with 3 picture of black women above them Tati's Buttah Joint: Take Some Leave Some photo by: Jovan Landry, Location: Block House Gallery A part of Links Hall's CO-Misson Curational Residency

Keyierra Collins has crowd-funded a project with 3AP

  • Take Some Leave Some

    by: Keyierra Collins
    • $6,235 raised of $5,000 goal
    • 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
      • 3Arts matched
      • 125% funded

    I am creating a collaborative, durational installation set inside a house on the South Side of Chicago that uses movement and performance to reflect on lessons learned and passed down to Black women. For one week in 2021, we will …

    Read more about Take Some Leave Some