At the age of five, Kia Smith had a vision: when she grew up, she would lead her own dance company. As the daughter of South Side jazz icon Jimmy Ellis, however, she was not yet a dancer, and her early artistic experiences focused more on musical theater.

Undeterred, she moved from chorus to musical theater, eventually landing at the Hyde Park School of Dance in high school. This led to her studying dance in college, performing in a few companies, and then going on to graduate school where she finally took the plunge. In 2017, Smith hired a few friends out of her own pocket to put on some shows in Chicago.

Eight years later, her company, South Chicago Dance Theatre (SCDT), has grown from a few sporadic performances to a professional troupe of paid dancers – with health insurance – performing around the globe.

“It feels a little surreal to be in our eighth season because honestly it feels like I just started yesterday,” Smith said. “It’s grown so quickly and we still have so much work to do.”

SCDT, based at the Hyde Park School of Dance, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave., will open its new season next week with a show at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, one of the country’s leading contemporary dance venues.

“This achievement is a really big milestone in our growth,” she said. “We all still have so much to learn and grow and expand as an organization, so it doesn’t feel like we’ve ‘arrived’ in any way, shape or sense of the word, but it’s so exciting.”

The company of about 18 dancers is described by Smith as a multicultural organization that “seamlessly blends classical and contemporary dance styles.” In addition to shows, the SCDT hosts a number of educational and community programs, the annual South Chicago Dance Festival, a choreography fellowship, and international partnerships.

While the company’s most well-known feature is its public-facing troupe, most people come into contact with the group through its educational programs, Smith said. Each year, those programs take place in more than 20 schools, mostly on the South and West sides, including Kenwood Academy. Between after-school dance classes, daytime dance classes, theater classes and a Black History Month performance series, Smith expects SCDT to work with more than 8,000 students this school year.

The heart of the organization, however, is its Choreographic Diplomacy program, which takes the company around the world and brings something of that world back to the South Side. With a mission to “use the creative process and the art of dance to build a global community with people,” says Smith, the company has hosted workshops in South Korea, the Netherlands and Colombia. The program is now in its sixth year and is inviting dancers from those countries back to Chicago.

“When the South Korean dancers came to Chicago, we had residents at Kenwood Academy at the time, so those students were learning traditional Korean dance,” Smith said. “We’re really about being in community with people, literally internationally, and using dance to bring people together.”

Looking ahead to the upcoming season, Smith highlighted three new works that the ensemble will perform when it returns to the Auditorium Theater in early May.

The first piece is “Temporal Trance” by Frank Chaves, longtime artistic director of River North Dance. Smith also presents “Limitless,” a 45-minute piece honoring black composers that features live musicians onstage, and commissions a new work by Guggenheim Prize-winning artist Kate Weare.

“The South Side coming downtown to perform is so historic,” Smith said of the May performance. “I’m just grateful that we’re here and that we can all continue to do what we love.”

For those who don’t want to wait until 2025 to see SCDT, the group’s first Chicago show will be on September 21 at Navy Pier. For more information, visit www.southchicagodancetheatre.com