dancer | choreographer | teacher
About Brennan
Brennan Kolbo, originally from Crete, studied Dance Performance and Choreography at Elon University in North Carolina. While at Elon, she was a Teaching and Learning Assistant for Somatic Theories courses and was elected president of Elon DanceWorks, a student run dance company. Brennan has trained nationally at the American Dance Festival, River North Dance Chicago, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, DanceWorks Chicago, Thodos Dance Chicago, and The Big Muddy Dance Company. She has presented work at a TEDxYouth conference, Omaha Under the Radar artist showcase, American College Dance Association conferences, and has choreographed national award-winning pieces for Expressions Academy of Dance. In 2018, Brennan traveled to Havana, Cuba to intern and train with Malpaso Dance Company. Most recently, Brennan danced with Consuming Kinetics Dance Company in St. Louis as a performing artist. While the pandemic put a pause on all performances, Brennan found joy in teaching ballet and contemporary dance.
Artistic Statement
I dance to feel. I dance to speak. I dance to connect.
Dance gives me the opportunity to connect to something deeply human and often forgotten within my soul. As a human being, I have a range of emotional responses to the world around me. I experience these emotions with my physical body, in addition to my mental being. There is so much about my emotional experiences and memories that can’t be captured in words. Because of this, I use dance to connect those internal thoughts to my external environment. For me, movement is the clearest expression of my feeling.
Dance offers me a physical language for expressing life experiences. Because of this, I use dance to communicate my stories and feelings with others. I feel that movement set to a specific piece of music can take the audience to another place and out of their daily realities. Musicality is a part of who I am; so as a choreographer and performer, I am constantly driven by the sounds and music around me. I learned early that I can use those rhythms and movements to bring an audience member into that experience with me. Through dance, I can share my story with others without saying a single word.
Dance has the power to build communities. I have a thirst for culture and thrive on opportunities to learn more about those different from myself. Dance transcends cultural boundaries and I can use dance to make connections. As a performing artist, I have the ability to share my knowledge with others and to learn from them, regardless of language, socioeconomic background, religion, experience or daily routine. The work I put in as an artist, day after day, impacts the people around me in a very real and important way.