Mauriah Donegan Kraker is a midwesterner, a collaborative performance maker, a long-distance walker primarily invested in slow travel: walking around the block and through the city as a means of attending to choreographic unfolding of time cycles in the body + land. Her movement practices are shaped by her time competing as an Olympic-level athlete; endurance, duration + precise framing of body/land are drivers in the creation of place-based works. 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 is a recent recipient of 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. 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 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 Walmarts and sidewalks in the states, The Croft Residency.