Siobhan Burke is a dance critic for The New York Times and a contributing writer for Dance Magazine. She has written on dance and performance for Open Space, The Village Voice, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and Artforum.com, among other publications. She is the recipient of a 2018 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and was a 2013 USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow.
Burke's writing is informed by her background as a dancer. Originally from Northampton, MA, she grew up studying Irish dance in Hartford, CT, and Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. She shifted her focus to contemporary dance as a student at Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in American Studies in 2008, earning the John Demos Prize in American Studies. Between 2005 and 2014 she danced with the North American touring company of Riverdance and with choreographers including Darrah Carr, RoseAnne Spradlin, Jillian Sweeney, and Rebecca Warner. In 2017 she appeared in the work of Yvonne Rainer as part of David Michalek’s film installation Slow Dancing/Trio A. She continues to collaborate with artists, currently as the writer-in-residence with Jean Butler's Our Steps Foundation.
Burke has been a guest speaker in classes at Princeton University, New York University, Columbia University's Teachers College, Virginia Commonwealth University, St. Johnsbury Academy, and other high-school, college, and graduate-level programs. She was an adjudicator for the American College Dance Association's 2018 Central Region conference at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has been an adjunct lecturer at Barnard since 2013.