Rhianna Cranston is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, choreographer, and scholar based in Denver, Colorado. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Kansas and is currently pursuing a MFA in Dance with a secondary emphasis in sound engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her artistic practice is rooted in an instinctual drive toward creativity, listening, and human connection, engaging movement and sound as interconnected forms of embodied research.

Trained in a wide spectrum of styles, from ballet (Cecchetti technique), modern (Horton and Dunham technique), contemporary, Hip-hop proper, vernacular jazz, and tap, Rhianna’s work embraces hybridized and interdisciplinary practices. As a biracial, Black woman raised in Kansas, her lived experiences deeply inform her artistry. Existing within spaces of the betweens, across cultures, disciplines, and histories, she investigates hybridity as a generative and liberatory site rather than a place of resolution. Her current research and thesis explore biracial Blackness, sonic futurism, and the body as a hybrid archive, treating sound as embodied memory, ancestral residue, and a guide for movement rather than accompaniment.

Teaching and mentorship are central to Rhianna’s practice. She is an instructor at Miss Rachael’s Dance in Denver and works with studios, schools, and organizations across Colorado and beyond, offering instruction, choreography, residencies, and teacher training. Her pedagogy emphasizes inclusive learning environments, whole dancer wellness, and youth centered care, informed by training in youth protection, dancer mental wellness, and early childhood education through the Wolf Trap Institute for the Arts and the National Dance Institute. Beyond the classroom, Rhianna has held professional dance appointments with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Second Company, Davis Contemporary Dance Company, the Boulder Jazz Dance Collective, and continues to collaborate with movers and shakers throughout her community.