Mauriah Donegan Kraker (she/her)

Mauriah Donegan Kraker is a midwesterner, a choreographer, a long-distance walker invested in slow travel. She walks place as a means of attending to the choreographic unfolding of time cycles in body + land. This walking practice is a driver in the creation of dance works that live somewhere in the realms of heightened states of physicality, dreaming and walking. 

Mauriah's work has been presented in the Italian Alps, deserted building in Asia, under highway underpasses, along rivers + in prairie sites in the Midwest. As a collaborative performer, she has danced at New York City’s Danspace Project, 92nd St Y, The Chocolate Factory, Dance Theater Workshop, Center for Performance Research and Roulette. She has performed in the works of Jennifer Monson and is a longtime collaborator with Wild Space Dance Company. She's appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, in NFL commercials, and toured internationally with PILOBOLUS Dance Company. She is a recent recipient of Volland, Ucross + MacDowell Fellowships. 

Mauriah arrived to the field of dance through athletics. She grew up as an Olympic level athlete, living at both the Colorado Springs + Lake Placid Olympic Training Centers. Mauriah served both as team captain of the USA Rhythmic Gymnastics National Team as well as interim National Team Coach, representing the country at the 2002 World Championships. She was named Athlete of the Year (2002) by USA Gymnastics for her performance and leadership. For the past two decades, she has combined somatic practice, personal training, storytelling to work with pre and post-natal clients, young elite athletes, intergenerational communities, and in memory care and Parkinson’s spaces. Her teaching at Lawrence University reflects this training history; her current focus is creating practices of care for the performing artist/athlete as well as developing a new minor + interdisciplinary program- Dance: Embodied Collaborative Practice.

Lineage: Mauriah thinks of her time working alongside Deb Loewen, Jennifer Monson and Kirsti Simpson. She thinks of all the folks from the University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign during her mfa years, her time at Taipei National University of the Arts, and conversations with people and place: fishing villages in Costa Rica, mountains in New Mexico, cliff walking in Portugal, midnight forest walking in Wales, prairies and sidewalks in the states, The Croft Residency.