05/28/2026
The day Kathy Dunn Hamrick first met Alyson Dolan, she knew that if she were ever to ask someone to take over her dance company, it would be this young redhead from Florida. Dolan wasn’t even living in Austin then, much less dancing with Hamrick’s company. She and her husband were just visiting to see if they’d want to move here. But in the Starbucks at Oltorf and I-35, Hamrick felt an instant kinship with Dolan.
Both had attended Florida State University and had the same mentor. Both loved playing with rhythm, speed, and time, bringing musicality to their work. And the two shared the same deep commitment to making and teaching dance.
“We just clicked,” Dolan said. Though Hamrick was 20 years Dolan’s senior and the director of her own company, she immediately treated Dolan like a colleague. “There was a lot of mutual respect there I appreciated . … I think she knew that I was in it for the long haul. She did say one time, ‘I could tell you were really similar to me, building your life around dance.’”
Two days after that initial coffee in 2012, Hamrick offered Dolan a spot in her company. Two weeks later, she asked Dolan to take over teaching one of her classes at Café Dance. And 11 years after that, Hamrick did indeed ask Dolan to take over . She had to. In July 2023, Hamrick was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.
The news devastated Dolan and her fellow dancers.
Hamrick was still around to ease the transition. She served on the board and attended rehearsals at Dolan’s invitation.
“Kathy would give me pages and pages of notes and affirmations of things she saw that she loved, things that I didn’t even realize I was doing. Everybody needs that person that’s like, ‘I trust you. I support you. Keep going.’”
That was then. Now, Dolan and the company are preparing for their next new original work, Love, Loss & Other Constellations, to be performed May 29-31 at East Side Performing Arts, and for the first time they’re developing a dance without the company’s founder. In February, 31 months after learning she had cancer, Kathy Dunn Hamrick passed away.
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