Kristina is a rare gifted, combination of choreographer, performer, and teacher of contemporary and traditional folkloric dances of the Middle East/North Africa who seeks to redefine the contexts of traditional dance. Awarded a Let Creativity Happen grant from the City of Houston for her North African dance programs, she was also recently awarded her fifth Support for Artists and Creative Individuals grant, her first for literature, from the Houston Arts Alliance for “Inara and the World Tree: An Anthology of Tales” a collection of short stories based on ancient Mesopotamian myths. Kristina was voted by Houston Press as one of the “100 Creatives of Houston” for choreography and has a list of firsts to her name.

Kristina is:
• the first to teach Middle Eastern dance as a credited course at a university in Texas (Rice University, receiving the Frank W. Bearden Award for Teaching Excellence);
• the first to teach Middle Eastern Dance at a center for psychology (the Jung Center of Houston);
• the first in the US to develop arts-in-education programs on the Middle East (Young Audiences of Houston); and
• one of the first to develop/perform a narrative Middle Eastern dance form in the US.

Kristina has performed and taught in countless spaces, nationally and internationally, traditional and nontraditional and won numerous awards for her choreography and teaching.

Currently, Kristina teaches online dance classes and workshops, writes on dance history, teaches an online class in goddess based cultures of the East/women’s sacred/secular history in the East, participates in international conferences on ancient/contemporary dance, and is extensively engaged in research for future narrative and cultural dance programs. She is a lifelong student of Indigenous ritual, women’s dances and Hatha yoga. Kristina loves cooking, baking, and giving parties, and playing with her cats Ruh and Nour. To learn more about Kristina, please visit www.divinedances.com.