Hi! My name is Kristen, or Kriss I also go by :) I am a movement artist inspired to make work that connects us with our humanity and interconnectedness with the environment. I am constantly asking, how can we be in our most available state to receive, integrate, and transform information?

It is from this state, I believe we can be better prepared to consider experiences less visible and expand our ways of engaging in dialogue (verbally, somatically, emotionally, etc). I feel motivated to understanding how one’s somatic ecology is shaped by our natural and artificial environments and how this feeds evolving cultures. I have fostered this practice through contemporary dance, contact improvisation, axis syllabus, and break dance, amongst other families of movement.

My creative work has been received throughout the Bay Area and greater North West, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, and Germany. As a Director, I bring strategies for devising new work with multiple mediums and perspectives. I pull from my studies in the Tamalpa Life Art Process to bridge intimate memoir to the public stage and the Yat Bentley approach to character development in finding dynamic, authentic relationships to self, other, and environment. These schools of theater and creative expression accompanied by my experiences in performance, teaching, and directing support the creation and development of current and responsive work.

I recently finished studies at Tanzfabrik Schule in Berlin, Germany (2021-2022) and am currently an Axis Syllabus Teacher Candidate. I was an Artist in Residence at Shawl Anderson in Berkeley, CA (2020-2021) and was a Lead Artist at SAFEhouse (2017-2018) and was selected for the Mark Foehringer Young Choreographers' Forum, 2017. I have received recognition through the Institute of Theatre Dance and Performance at UC Davis (2014), and am an Arties Award recipient (Sacramento, 2016). I have performed and collaborated with various Bay Area companies such as James Graham and Dancers, KD MovingGround, Piñata Collective, Scott Wells & Dancers, Footloose Presents, Artship, Yat Bentley School of Performance, and Dugway Proving Ground.