Lillian “Lily” Mae Ransijn is a performance artist, choreographer, and educator. Lily is the older sister of Anneke, Kirby’s third great love.
Lily’s work explores grief, loss, intimacy, and connection through the moving body and personal storytelling. She uses performance as a space of elegiac and erotic ritual — what she calls “fertile ground for the sixth stage of grief: meaning-making.” Her stage and screen work finds beauty in the grotesque and humor in the everyday challenge of moving through and metabolizing life’s inherited weight.
Background
Lillian was born to a Dutch father and an American mother, who met while the latter was studying political theory in the Netherlands. Despite their age difference, they fell in love and later relocated to the United States, raising two daughters, Lily and Anneke, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.
She graduated from Emory University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, Movement Studies, and Theater, later earning an MFA in Devised Performance Practice from the University of the Arts/Pig Iron School (2016). In 2022, she completed training in Intimacy Coordination with IDC Professionals.
Ransijn currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches Movement for the Actor courses and works as an intimacy director for Connecticut Repertory Theater productions.
Her artistic and teaching practice integrates Jacques Lecoq physical theater, Laban Movement Studies, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and contemporary, queer, and Afro-diasporic dance forms — all rooted in trauma-informed, consent-forward, embodied storytelling.
Influence on Kirby
While Kirby dated Anneke, he spent nearly all of his time in the sisters’ Philadelphia home. He recalls reading a book by Lecoq at one point, as well as attending some of Lily’s performances. He was inspired by her reimagination of what culture, entertainment, spectacle, and meaning-making could look like.
Lily’s adopted rescue pit bull, Ollie, also helped Kirby learn how to love dogs. This experience helped him to later form a profound bond with Mookie, his mother’s adopted dog, in 2024. After adopting him in Fall 2022, Lily sent Ollie to a new home in early 2025.