Arts Directory

About

Artist Bio

Stephanie Wilkins is the Artistic Director, Resident Choreographer and Co-founder of the Columbia Repertory Dance Company in Columbia, SC. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Dance Performance & Choreography from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in NYC, where she lived for fifteen years. She has taught, choreographed and performed extensively in New York, San Francisco, Brazil, Kenya, Scotland and South Carolina. Stephanie is an adjunct Professor of Dance at Columbia College and has previously taught at the University of SC and Coker University. In January 2015, she premiered Woven, her first evening-length work, with jazz composer Mark Rapp. Stephanie choreographed The Great Gatsby for Trustus Theatre in 2019 and has choreographed nine works for the SC Ballet Company. She performed her solo, Burned, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland in August 2022. Three of her works for Cola Rep Dance Co were selected to be performed as part of the Dumbo Dance Festival at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY in 2023 and 2024. Cola Rep Dance Company is currently rehearsing for their 6th season, with a performance at Piccolo Spoleto May 31, 2025, as well as an evening-length concert in August 2025 at the Koger Center’s lower level performance space. Stephanie is also currently choreographing Legally Blonde: The Musical with Workshop Theatre. Stephanie is a Nationally Certified Pilates Teacher and was the founder of KayLynn Pilates in West Columbia, SC, where she still teaches part-time.

Artist Statement

My work can be described as Emotional Physicality. I am fascinated by relationships and I focus on what is means to be human. One of my signature works, Ache, is about love in all its forms, i.e., romantic love, familial love, friendship love. It employs a substantial amount of partnering, another of my trademarks as a choreographer. I choreographed Ache shortly after falling deeply in love with a man that I ended up having a long-term relationship with. I was so in love with him that my heart “ached” and although the relationship did not last and in fact, caused me a good deal of pain in later years, it was where I was at the time. I’m proud of that work, despite the outcome of the relationship, and it marks a moment in time. My work is always personal, based on my own life and experiences, but themes that every human being can relate to. After tearing my ACL, I found the hardest part of going through that injury was not the physical part, but the mental. I thought I would never dance again, that I would never be the same. After eight months of physical therapy, I started choreographing a new work, (un)Broken. The piece spoke to not only people who have suffered an injury, but also viewers who were not sure of the meaning of the dance, but felt something deeply personal. A colleague saw the work and said she thought it was about the Holocaust and how tears streamed down her face the entire time. She is a Jewish American who had relatives that lived through the Holocaust, so that is where her heart and mind took her. In more recent years, I have explored how necessary it is in life to hold joy and sadness in the same palm. For our sixth season, I am revamping a work called Loneliness. This work differs from many of my dances in that there is no partnering, but rather individual dancers moving alongside each other. This is purposeful and was created during the pandemic. My newest work that will also be a part of our company’s sixth season is The In-Between Place. I am currently going through a major transition in my personal and professional life, and the phrase “one must shed the old skin before the new one can come…” has replayed itself over and over in my mind. I have also come to understand that no one can do it alone. Especially when going through major life events and changes, we all need other people to not only get through it, but to succeed and flourish. The bottom line for my artistic approach is this: I want the people that see it to feel something. I want to move people. Even if they do not understand the details of the work, I want it to cause a visceral reaction in them. To me, that is the highest form of praise for a work of art.