Erin Kouwe is a creator, dance artist, and educator. Her work explores disorientation, memory, and identity through collaborative dance-making that can actualize alternative futures and imagine new worlds in performance. Erin is a recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission's Individual Artist Fellowship and the Gretchen Moran Research Fellowship. Her choreographic work has been presented by Nashville Ballet, Nashville Ballet 2, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Slippery Rock University, the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Tennessee Women’s Theater Project, A.P.E. Gallery, and Going Dutch Festival, where she has been a featured Commissioned Artist. Erin is the founder of Seen, a performance project that disorients performance. Seen builds community around dance by generating warm spaces for witnessing, sharing, and exchange about creative process.

Erin has danced with New Dialect, Visceral Dance Chicago, and Luna Negra Dance Theater. She has performed in works by choreographers Jeanine Durning, Ohad Naharin, Yin Yue, Bryan Arias, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, Jenna Riegel, Banning Bouldin, Joy Davis, Idan Sherabi, Monica Cervantes, Julia Rhoads, Barbie Diewald, and others. Erin holds an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Smith College and a B.A. in Dance from Point Park University.

Erin is a certified Countertechnique Teacher and an Assistant Professor of Dance at Slippery Rock University. Her previous positions in education include Visiting Artist in Dance at Mount Holyoke College and Lecturer in the Dance and Women Gender and Sexuality Studies programs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has also taught at Smith College, Hampshire College, Belmont University, and Nashville Ballet’s Professional Training Division. Erin has led workshops and masterclasses at Jacob’s Pillow, Perry Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp, Tennessee Association of Dance, Contempora.PR, and the American College Dance Association: New England.