Dawn Urista received her MFA in Dance from the University of Oregon in 2011 and graduated from UC Irvine in 2002 with degrees in both Dance and History. Prior to her MFA studies at the University of Oregon she performed professionally in San Francisco with group A dance and with the Conservatory of Classical Ballet. She has participated in the Royal Danish Ballet’s summer intensive in Copenhagen where her instructors included Thomas Lund, Vivi Findt, Johnny Eliasen, Eva Draw, and Raymond Rodriguez. In collegiate and professional work she has danced for  Alexandrous Ballard, Sue Borgeson, Tamara Grose, Walter Kennedy, Valerie Ifill, Alyssa Lee, Donald McKayle, Ann Fisher-Ratto, Michael Lowe, Sally Streets, Xiao Liu-Moore, Larry Rosenberg, Glenda Carhart, and David Allen; and has acquired a repertory of post-modern dance as well as classical and contemporary ballet. Her MFA research entails a comparison of two versions of Giselle's Mad Scene and a look into the historical and cultural reasons for different characterizations. She also harbors an unholy lifelong love of books, bookmaking, and letterpress design and enjoys incorporating the temporality of dance with the physical imprint of the bound pages.