HOLLY WILLIAMS performed nationally and internationally with the companies of Laura Dean, José Limón (at New York City Center) and Mark Morris. She was an early member of the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Monnaie Dance Group/Mark Morris, and rejoined the company in Brussels, Belgium. She toured extensively worldwide with MMDG, appearing in original casts of The Hard Nut, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Going Away Party, Gloria, and others.
Her choreography has been commissioned by the American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive, State Street Ballet (Santa Barbara), Ballet Austin Senior Young Artists and the Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Austin Lyric Opera, Austin Theatre Alliance, and for the concert stage. Her work has been seen at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland and her signature work, Black Magic, was performed throughout Austria. In 2007 she was a Fulbright Fellow in the Dance Program, Arts Academy, Turku University of Applied Sciences in Turku, Finland.
For 25 years she was a professor and administrator at the University of Texas at Austin, until retirement in 2022, serving as Senior Associate Dean in the College of Fine Arts and dance program head in the Department of Theatre and Dance.
From 2005-2013 she was on the executive board of directors of the American College Dance Association (ACDA), including as President. ACDA is the largest organization serving dance in higher education in the U.S. She also served on dance panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, Dance/USA and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. As a writer and critic, she has contributed articles on dance to The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Austin American-Statesman; and other publications.
Williams has a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Barnard College/Columbia University and an MFA from Texas Woman's University. She received the Texas Woman's University 2014 Chancellor's Alumni Excellence Award.