2019 Dancer FELLOW
Erin Thompson’s dance performance career began in 1970 with the Minnesota Dance Theatre and continued in New York City in the companies of Nina Wiener and Bebe Miller. She received a New York Dance and Performance award, “BESSIE”, in 1986 for her dancing in Nina Wiener's Enclosed Time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. Erin moved back to Minneapolis in 1990, danced with Zenon Dance Company for two years, and founded 45 Chartreuse Dance Company with her husband, Byron Richard, in 1992. They received Choreographer Fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1993) and from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994, 1996). Since 1992, Erin has been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota's Department of Theater Arts and Dance as well as at Zenon Dance Company where she continues to provide advanced professional contemporary/modern dance training for the Twin Cities’ dance community. In the past five years, she has appeared in the work of choreographers Joanie Smith, Judith Howard, Penny Freeh, Sharon Picasso and Deborah Jinza Thayer. Erin received a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Dance Educator in 2008 and the City Pages Best Dancer Award in 2016. She is an ATI certified Alexander Technique teacher.
2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer Bebe Miller