Emily Rushing (she/her) has spent her entire adult life putting down roots in the Austin creative performance community. Even before graduating from UT Austin with a BA in Theater and Dance, she was already working with some of the most seasoned contemporary choreographers in the city.
A natural collaborator and community builder, Emily discovered the best way to grow as a creative is by working with and building up the other artists in the scene. In 2018, she co-founded The Seam Project, a series of backyard shows for local performers and audiences alike. These radically-accessible shows ran for two seasons and hosted scores of artists. As Jonelle Seitz wrote about her in 2023: “More than anything, Emily thrives in collaborating and finding ways to support others’ work.”
Emily has choreographed, collaborated, and performed with local artists and companies including Chaddick Dance Theater, Blue Lapis Light, Jennifer Sherburn, BLiPSWiTCH, Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company, Ellen Bartel Collective, Lisa Nicks, Sharon Maroquín, Rosalyn Nasky and Carissa Fisher. She continues to find inspiration through continuing education in her movement practice, which has led her to train with Deborah Hay, Fabian Wixe, Anouk Van Dijk, and Anton Lachky. Studying with David Zambrano, she completed 50 hours of Flying Low and Passing Through.
As a choreographer, her work has been seen in various settings including parks, backyards, local businesses and festivals such as Austin Dance Festival and Strictly Seattle Dance Festival. She received a nomination for Best Dancer in 2018 by the Austin Critics Table for her dancing in Flicker.Burn.Repeat., a collaborative piece with Carissa Fisher and Cody Rushing. Most recently, she co-produced the Austin-based dance festival, Dance Carousel (founded by Ellen Bartel in 2004), is one of three in a multimedia collaboration called Vessel Project with Rosalyn Nasky and David Sydiongco and continues to collaborate with the many talented artists in her city.
In her work, Emily aims to get to a place of honesty and reveal the lesser seen, but desperately there parts of herself. She enjoys following her natural curiosity in movement. "When she springs into movement, it’s like, oh, you thought I was just chilling here—you had no idea." is how her dynamic movement style has been described.