“As an artist, I intend to communicate the way I see the world as a human participant in a giant global landscape- with compassion, critique, humor, and depth- a kaleidoscope of beautiful, horrific, irrational, whole, misguided, miraculous, magnificent complexity.”
Bio
Krista DeNio is an interdisciplinary choreographer, director, performer, writer and educator. She facilitates creative projects based in the principles and practices of ensemble-based theater. Artistic Director of MovingGround, she is committed to engaging interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges performance work, education and activism toward a socially just world. With her collaborators, she builds site-specific, audience-interactive theater experiences, where performers, audience participants and community partners engage the storytelling from various perspectives. Each experience is accompanied by forums for interaction.
Krista has collaborated with many choreographers and directors and most recently worked with Anne Bluethenthal/ ABD Productions and Skywatchers and company as an Artist Facilitator and Youth Program Director (2015-17). Skywatchers creates performance work, engaging advocacy and community building with residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. For the past (7) years, (2017-2024) she served as the Art Program Manager and then Associate Director of Arts and Education, for Larkin Street Youth Services (San Francisco) working with Transition Age Youth (TAY) experiencing homelessness.
Krista is a House Artist at CounterPulse, where she has also been a two-time Artist-in-Residence and coproduced the work of MovingGround. Since 2012 she has been a member of the International Interdisciplinary Artists Consortium (IIAC), a network of performing and creative artists, educators and producers working across artistic disciplines and continental divides.
Current projects include: the NETWORK project (2017- present), an Artist Residency Exchange in North Macedonia, in collaboration with IIAC and GPS/Global Practice Sharing as part of Movement Research, NYC with funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Past projects include: EchoTheaterSuitcase project, bringing together mixed ensembles of military veterans and civilian non-veterans, to create original, site-specific, audience interactive performance work based on the stories of each unique ensemble, and NETWORK—investigating what humans can learn from tree communities about modes and means of survival.
As a lecturer, she has worked most recently with U.C. Berkeley’s Theater, Dance and Performance Studies department; been a visiting artist and collaborator in Empathy Lab, a course developed in collaboration with Anthropology professor Lochlann Jain, at Stanford University—bringing Anthropologists and Performance makers together to share methodologies; and adjunct professor at Marlboro College, Springfield College and others. Krista has taught dance and performance making throughout the Bay Area, country and internationally.
As the Executive Artistic Director of Earthdance Creative Living Project [2009-2013], she guided organizational and programmatic vision, designed and curated innovative interdisciplinary programs, and built bridges between artistic training, sustainable living practices, social justice and community engagement work.
In Western Massachusetts she founded the CONTACT project which became EchoTheaterSuitcase project, and collaborated with other artists including: Cynthia McLaughlin’s Portrait Tales: The Art of Leaving, Jen Polins, Saliq Savage, Wire Monkey Dance, and Lani Nahele. Through the E|MERGE Interdisciplinary Artist Residency, an annual program co-founded, curated and produced by DeNio (2010-2014), with Daniel Davis, Karen Bernard/ New Dance Alliance and others, at Earthdance Creative Living Project, she had the opportunity to collaborate with artists and projects from around the country, including Jen Abrams / Any Resemblance, Gillian Chadsey, Sandie Luna, Katarina Eriksson/ Frank and friends, Paloma McGregor, and many others.
In New York City [2007-09], she created work and performed at/with the Performance Mix Festival, Joyce Soho; Movement Research, Judson Church; the NY Clown Festival at The Brick; Chashama; the soloNOVA festival, P.S. 122; La MaMa and Meredith Monk’s Ascension Variations at the Guggenheim Museum. She also spent time teaching and directing theater, with Working Classroom [Albuquerque, New Mexico], where she helped develop and directed A Light In My Soul/Una Luz En Mi Alma, a project about the Crypto Jews of New Mexico, developed with the Working Classroom ensemble, Leigh Fondakowski, Tectonic Theater Project and parts of the local New Mexican community.
In the San Francisco Bay Area [1997-2007], she created and produced her own work, performed and collaborated with Jo Kreiter and Flyaway productions, Kim Epifano/ Epiphany Productions, Tanya Calamoneri, Allen Willner, Angus Balbernie/1000GreyBirds, Gabriel Todd/ freaksoultribe, Rachael Lincoln, Susannah Martin, Joan Bruemmer, Ryan Eggensperger and many others. She co-founded the Experimental Performance Institute at the New College of California and acted as key faculty and administrative staff between 2001-2003; 2006-07, in San Francisco,CA.
Krista received her BA in Dance/Dramatic Art and I.S.F. [Development and Human Rights] from U.C. Berkeley and her MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University, where she had the opportunity to train with extraordinary innovators in the field of contemporary performance making, including: Wendell Beavers, SITI Company, Leigh Fondakowski, Moises Kaufman/Tectonic Theater Project, Meredith Monk, Stephen Wangh, Barbara Dilley, Ethelyn Friend, Erika Berland and many more. Further training has included: American Conservatory Theater (ACT) Summer Training Congress, Action Theater with Ruth Zaporah and a plethora of dance, movement, vocal, acting, and contemplative work. She is a certified yoga teacher.
In all her spare time she likes to sit still at the nearest Shambhala Meditation Center or on her own cushion.[/expand]
