The Fly Honeys are a femme-powered, queer-celebratory, all-body loving, smoke-show of a
performance project where pleasure is king and favorS the queens.
We are dancers, collaborators, mothers, cousins, doctors, daughters, DJs, teachers, friends, writers, actors, arts administrators, bartenders, babysitters, musicians, matriarchs, they-triarchs, queers, dykes, honeys, homies, brothers, sisters, enbys, boys, bois…. a whole damn Hive.
We are creative shape-shifters.
We have been an illegal underground party, a six-week-sold-out-theatrical run, a quick weekend in a warehouse, a series of open public dance workshops, a virtually streamed pandemic production, a mutual aid support system, a group of go-go dancers, back up dancers, single nightlife acts, featured at a major summer music festival, a decade-plus long social art practice, a NYE conga line at a Michelin-star restaurant, and an ever evolving community. Most recently, we have been a multi-night, fuck-off resident production at iconic Chicago music venue, Thalia Hall.
No matter our form, we stay Fly.
We make original performances that pull in dance, cabaret, variety, music and comedy through high-energy choreography, grand spectacle, a rotating cast of nationally lauded artists, and some real funny broads.
Our work is deeply indebted to the dance forms and cultures created by and for women, strippers, showgirls, burlesque artists, radicalized queer spaces, Black and Brown creative expressions and activist frameworks.
From these cultures, we have learned that organizing bodies in motion is a community-building practice; that singing, dancing, shaking ass, and being naked in every sense is a catalyst for change.
Gender is FLUID.
Sexuality is a spectrum.
Glitter, glitter everywhere.
Long live Honey.
ARTISTS + COMMUNITY
The Fly Honey Show began as a one-night-only event in then DIY loft space, The Inconvenience in 2010 and grew into Chicago legends, faithfully recognized for their queer-celebratory, all-body-loving, femme-powered, & unabashed ass shaking performances.
The Fly Honeys and our Show acted as a multi-format, community-fueled movement, led by director/choreographer/co-producer Erin Kilmurray and alongside Mary Williamson (host/writer), John Cicora (music/band director), Missi Davis (producer), and Shannon Matesky (writer).
From the jump, The Fly Honey Show has been deeply collaborative—a project where ideas don’t have clean edges, and movement, music, design, writing, performance, and point of view all bleed into one another. Over the years, the work has been shaped by an ever-expanding hive of artists, including Alyssa Bierce, Alyssa Gregory, Andrew Green, Anastar Alvarez, Ayana Woods, Bear Bellinger, Bran Moorhead, Cassandra Porter, Dalton Rhodes, Dan Riley, Darling Shear, Deandra Alaba, Emily Blazer, Eleanor Kahn, Ellen Willet, Ginny Cook, Heather Sparling, Himbindu Poorori, Jen Dorman, Jillian Endebrock, Joe Varisco, Jon Butts, Josh Anderson, Karolina Prus, Kasey Alfonso, Lori Crosthwait, Liam Minetti, Maggie Kubley, Marta Jean Evans, Melissa “Boom Boom” DuPrey, Mia Vivens, Mikhail Fiksel, Molly Brennan, Quinn Tsan, Ryan Tang, Sasha Smith, Sawyer Smith, Slick Jorgensen, Sydney Charles, Tia Monet Greer — and sincerely hundreds of dancers, independent artists, designers, technicians, production crews, singers, musicians, bands, DJs, and collaborators who brought their own bodies, voices, time, and rigor to the work.
The Fly Honey Show has been less a single vision than a living ecosystem—responding to the cultural moment, built by many hands (each with their own middle finger), shaped in real time through real talk, and held together by a massive amount of glitter and joy.
Want the Fly Honeys to come to your town? Give us a buzz.