Kate Digby

Associate Professor
Dance
Associate Director for Dance
Email: kdigby@k-state.edu
Office: 131 Nichols Hall

Biography

Kate Digby is a choreographer, movement director, and creator of interdisciplinary performance experiences whose work has been presented in Canada, Ecuador, India, New York City, and across the United States. She has created over 50 original dance works, directed and choreographed the re-mount of Erika Batdorf’s play The Red Horse is Leaving, and movement directed movement the short film Burnout, by Sabrina McCormick.

Digby’s collaborative immersive performance project, Search for Simurgh, the first iteration of which was co-created and co-directed with Erika Batdorf, received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as funding from the Ontario Arts Council, Kansas State University, York University, and Biopac Systems, Inc. Prior projects have received funding from the Boston Cultural Council, The LEF Foundation, Puffin Foundation, Putnam Foundation, and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.

Digby’s research focuses on interoception and its relationship with emotional authenticity in performance and therapeutic contexts. In 2016, Digby and her collaborators PACIS hosted the Movement and Emotion as Computational Interfaces Workshop at York University, and in 2019, they conducted a study onKinesthetic Transference in Performance with support from the University of Toronto and Nightswimming. Digby’s forthcoming research will track the relationship between interoceptive awareness, emotional awareness, and emotional regulation. Current creative activities include the development of a web-based interactive dance and storytelling project, dis/place.

As a dancer, Digby performed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company as an apprentice member, in the companies of David Parker & The Bang Group, Prometheus Dance, and The Boston Dance Collective, and in the works of numerous independent choreographers, as well as with the non-profit organization she founded in 2000 and led for 10 years in Boston and New York City, Digby Dance.

Digby is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (RSME/T), a Registered Somatic Dance Educator and a Laban Movement Analyst. She is also a certified instructor of Yoga (RYT-200), The Batdorf Technique, Moving for Life Dance Exercise for Health®, and Body-Mind Dancing™.

Digby has previously served on the faculties of The Boston Conservatory, the Conservatory Division of the Longy School of Music, Roxbury Community College, and New York University's Athletic Department. She holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a CMA (graduate certificate) from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, and a BFA from the Boston Conservatory. Digby is currently pursuing certification as a Dance Movement Therapist.

At Kansas State, Digby’s teaching portfolio has included Anatomy for Dancers, Ballet I, all levels of Contemporary Dance, Dance Appreciation, Dance Composition, Improvisation, Pedagogy, and Somatic practices including Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals, Body Awareness/Restorative Practice, and Yoga.