projects.
about.
artist statement.
Suzanne Ryanstrati (she/her) is a descendent of an immigrant who arrived in America by boat in 1640, and sold into indentured servitude. Her familly history has been preserved through oral history, historic sites, publishings and artifacts passed down through generations. Her research-based choreographic works explore culture and the global human condition, using stories to bring awareness to human rights.
biography.
Suzanne Ryanstrati has a Master of Arts in Dance Choreography from the University of Iowa. She is a choreographer, educator, and director. Her choreography has been performed in Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington and made her International debut in England (2012 & 2015), France (2015, 2019), Germany (2016, 2019) and Ireland (2016).
Ryanstrati's professional dance career began at the age of 19 under Neil Hess, director of the Lone Star Ballet and TEXAS Musical Drama. She performed with Bill Evans in the USA and Japan, later relocating to Kansas City where she joined aha! dance theater and co-directed Reach...a movement collective with Richard Parsons.
Ryanstrati is a Traumatic Brain Injury survivor. Prior to and following her TBI she worked with people living with disability, terminal illness and debilitating diagnosis and chronic conditions. These include: Polio, Multiple Sclerosis, Spina Bifida, Bipolar Disorder, Dyslexia, Cerebral Palsy, Clinical Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Cystic Fibrosis and Parkinson's Disease, and Diabetes. In 2020 she founded Dancing Together with CF, a dance program for the Cystic Fibrosis community funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Prior to this, she founded a dance program at the National Parkinson's Foundation, Heartland where she worked for 7 years based on the Dance for PD program in New York and directed Ryanstrati & Co. where she employed people living with and without disabilities and diagnosed illness.
She has been a faculty member at the Kansas City Ballet School since 2008. Ryanstrati is the Director of The Dancing Word, an intergenerational production merging spoken word and dance produced by Westport Center for the Arts in Kansas City, Missouri
