About

I’ve spent nearly three decades working as a dance artist, facilitator, leader, and creative partner.

At age 20, I wrote an artist statement titled Movement Inspired. In it, I declared that my life and career would be defined by seeking inspiration through movement—of my body, my mind, and my overall life trajectory.

Below is my story in three Acts.

Black and white photo of a woman with wavy hair, one finger is pressing her lower lip to the side and she has one eyebrow raised

My 20s were defined by an insatiable pursuit of dance. In the studio I was training or teaching around 30 hours a week. Under the stage lights I played a superhero, danced in a wedding dress, and spun 20 feet in the air above a crowd holding on with one hand. I visited Boys & Girls Clubs and community centers, leading kids through exercises on trust, teamwork, and individual expression. I developed curriculum that connected movement to what kids were learning in school. To supplement my income, I taught Pilates and yoga to celebrities and lawyers, modeled medical scrubs, and choreographed flash mobs for corporate teams.

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Act 1: Movement of the Body

A female aerial silk performer hanging upside down while holding onto white silks with both hands. She has long hair, is wearing a black sports bra and black shorts, and is against a dark background. The silks extend to the ground and flow outward.

At age 30, at the peak of my performing and teaching career, I learned that the debilitating pain I had been experiencing on and off since college was caused by hip dysplasia and the best option for moving forward was major hip surgery.

During this time, my creativity needed an outlet, so I wrote and published Anatomy Riot. While my body recovered relatively quickly, the interruption sparked a shift into my next phase.

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Intermission


Book cover titled 'Anatomy Riot' by Emily Annette Running, featuring a woman in a handstand pose in front of a large window layered over an xray of a pelvis and red title text.

I remained deeply committed to dance, yet my mindset began to shift. It became clear that I wanted a relationship to dance that extended beyond physical performance alone.

For the next eleven years, I founded and led Dance Wire, a nonprofit dance service organization dedicated to building community through dance. Through listening, producing, connecting, and advocating, my work expanded from practicing the craft toward understanding dance’s broader role within communities, systems, and society.

In the years following the pandemic, two parallel experiences catalyzed my next evolution.

  • From 2022–2024, I led a national group of dance service organization leaders through a sustained exploration of their local and national ecosystems. Together we examined how dance communities were shifting in real time - navigating the space between what had been and what could be. That work profoundly reshaped how I understood systems, leadership, and change.

  • At the same time, I was building an Artist Mentorship program through Dance Wire, working one-on-one with dance artists as they shaped their careers, companies, and artistic identities.

Both of these experiences reminded me of something essential: I do my best work when I am in a creative environment myself.

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Act 2: Movement of the Mind

A diagram showing a central circle labeled 'DanceWire' connected to various other circles, including 'companies,' 'dance spaces,' 'venues,' 'artists,' 'patrons,' 'businesses,' 'neighborhoods,' 'donors,' 'sponsors,' 'visitors to Portland,' and others, representin

In my 20-year-old mind, a life inspired by movement meant relentless curiosity, ongoing personal growth, and moving my body a lot.

Today, it means integration. My work brings together decades of creative practice, leadership, mentorship, and systems-level thinking into a single body of work guided by a few central questions:

  • What becomes possible when we stop treating the body as secondary to thinking and instead let it lead?

  • What would change if artists were not seen as people existing adjacent to society, asking to be supported, but as leaders, collaborators, and partners with unique wisdom to contribute?

In June 2025, I closed Dance Wire and returned to my natural habitat as a creative solo-practitioner working in partnership with individuals, organizations, and institutions across creative, educational, philanthropic, and civic contexts.

A life organized around movement may not have a single title, but my superpower has become clear: leading people through the creative process.

Act 3: Movement through Life

I’m in the business of movement. Not just of bodies, but of ideas, systems, and possibilities.
— Emily Running
Woman dressed in red, crawling on the ground, surrounded by oversized brightly colored sculptures.

If you have a project, question, or challenge that would benefit from working through a creative, embodied lens — let’s explore.