Kia S. Smith
Founder · Director of Vision and Strategy · Resident Choreographer
“Meteoric is too mild a word for the rise of Kia Smith and South Chicago Dance Theatre.”
Visionary Leader. Storyteller. Cultural Connector.
Kia S. Smith is a Chicago native and her early training included Hyde Park School of Dance, The Joel Hall Dance Center, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, StoryCatchers Theatre, and the American Dance Festival. She holds a BFA in Dance from Western Michigan University and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she was an Advanced Opportunity Program Fellow.
She is the Founder and Director of Vision and Strategy for South Chicago Dance Theatre, the company’s Resident Choreographer and the founder of its signature programs the Main Company, Associate Artist Program, South Chicago Dance Festival, Choreographic Diplomacy™ Program, Education and Community Programs and Dancing Across Generations. As a freelance choreographer, Kia’s recent commissions include Lyric Opera Chicago (2026), Scottish Ballet School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2024), Resilience Dance (2024), New Dance Partners (2024), James Madison University (2024), Columbia College Chicago (2024), Opera Laguna (2024), Houston Contemporary Dance Company (2023), Chicago Opera Theater (2023), Giordano Dance Chicago (2023) and others.
Kia’s first evening length work Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley for South Chicago Dance Theatre premiered at the Auditorium Theatre of Chicago in 2023 and See Chicago Dance affirmed “Smith’s first evening length piece ‘Memoirs’ is a tour de force and a sensory immersion into this artists creative well springs”.
Kia is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance where she received the Joan Myers Brown Artist Development Fund scholarship in 2018. In 2021, she was a 3Arts Make A Wave awardee and an Ann & Weston Hicks Choreographic Fellow at the renowned Jacobs Pillow. She was a 2022 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and a participant in the Artist in Residence “AIR“ Program at the Cliff Dwellers Chicago. Kia was named a Rising Star in 2023 by Chicago Magazine, Player of the Moment in the category of Dance for New City Magazine’s annual 50 Players List in 2023 and one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2024. WBEZ recently recognized Kia as a “breakout artist” for 2024!
One of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2024
Artistic Statement
I am a performance-maker whose work spans contemporary dance, theater, jazz, opera and artistic diplomacy. My work is linked to the specific, idiosyncratic soundscapes, colors, peoples and ephemera of my childhood on Chicago’s South Side as the daughter of a well-known jazz saxophonist and visual artist.
I have a penchant for narrative-based works guided in process by a commitment to musicality, gesture and finely honed form. In addition to founding my dance company, South Chicago Dance Theatre, I am the founder of an international project entitled Choreographic Diplomacy™, which began in 2018 and presently spans the creation and presentation of new work with collaborators in Seoul, South Korea; Arnhem, the Netherlands; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Bogotá, Colombia; and Medellín, Colombia.
Here, art-making is a tool for engaging with diverse people by building collective experience, developing empathy in cross-cultural relations and reinforcing the importance of global citizenship. Though my work stems from my own experience of living in this Black, female body, I am ultimately interested in the deconstruction and transcendence of race and in community-building through movement and shared artistic experience.