Erin Johnson, Artistic Director

After years of dedicated artists’ services in her role as Associate Producer and then Interim Artistic Director, Erin Johnson brings a vision of a community-driven, artist-centered mission to steward Velocity into the future.

Velocity is very excited to announce Erin Johnson as our new Artistic Director. Erin has been serving as Interim AD for the past year as we transitioned to new executive leadership, and the board, the staff, and our Executive Director are unanimously behind making her leadership official and permanent.

“We are so pleased and proud to support Erin in her role as Artistic Director. She has shown great dedication and awareness towards empowering the voices of Velocity’s community; further, during the past months, she has shown leadership while executing programming and developing the path for the upcoming seasons.”
–Velocity Board of Directors

Erin has been with Velocity for over four years, serving as Associate Producer before stepping into her current role. Erin’s leadership exudes warmth and invites collaboration: at the heart of her tenure at Velocity has been how to make Velocity serve its artists, and never the other way around. We can see these shifts in our newest NextFest, which is bringing on new curators who have a vision for the festival’s curation process being more driven by artists’ needs. We see this in Erin’s new Fall Kick-Off this year, that brought the focus and resources back to the needs of artists trying to make their work and build their life here in Seattle.

“Erin’s commitment to supporting and elevating the work of Seattle dancers, choreographers, and dance artists is exceptional. She has that rare ability to collaborate with each artist individually while having an eye toward how each is located within the local, national, and international contemporary dance scenes. Further, her dedication to working with and for our dance community is inspiring.”
–Catherine Nueva España, Executive Director, Velocity Dance Center

We’re sure many of you are still taking in the launch of the Save Our Studio campaign. We know we have a lot of work ahead of us. Which is why we are so heartened and excited to have Erin at the helm next to Catherine.

To celebrate the official launch of this dynamic duo, and our campaign, we invite you to join us at our Fall Kick-Off party this Friday. We’ll come together as a community to celebrate the Velocity season, meet this year’s new Artist-In-Residence, and toast Velocity’s past, present, and future.

PHOTO – Devin Muñoz

ERIN JOHNSON has spent the past four years at Velocity working with hundreds of artists, from emerging to established, on projects in theaters, parks, stations, community centers, homes, warehouses and fountains. Now leading Velocity’s programming, she will be an advocate for artists and companies in our region; partner with local and national organizations to share resources and build networks of sustainability; and work in community to devise training and performance programming that sparks curiosity about dance and what it can be in this world.

Before Velocity, Erin worked as an independent producer in London, UK, coordinating and producing projects and tours with Dance Art Foundation, Joe Moran Dance, Sadhana Dance, The Place London, and Pell Ensemble and worked on the performance team during TBA:15 at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.

She holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Performance from the London Contemporary Dance School, and a B.A. from the University of Washington, where she studied Dance and Journalism.