CONNI MCKENZIE

she/hers

Conni is a dance filmmaker, choreographer, and educator working in the Bay Area. Prior to relocating to San Francisco, she had the opportunity to train in a variety of dance genres with several companies in New York City including Dance Theatre of Harlem, Mark Morris Dance Group, and the Radio City Rockettes. Conni began creating films while studying at the University of San Francisco so she could capture dance on camera. She has produced several shorts and released her first dance film, Set Me Free, in 2021. The film was featured in the 2021 San Francisco Dance Film Festival.


As an artist, Conni primarily sees herself as a teacher and cultural ambassador. For the past 3 years, she has been a dance instructor and coach at Studio 121 in the Mission District, and is looking to expand into teaching more adult classes and creating work for live performance in the upcoming year. Due to the pandemic, Conni was pushed into exclusively pursuing film work. Although this is an integral part of her practice, she also wants to spend more time nurturing her skills in composing choreography. Conni hopes to use dance as a way to inspire others to think critically about the life they are given and how they want to contribute to it. Her primary topic of exploration is how life is carried on the body, and how we can all learn to make choices that make ourselves happier and break cycles of trauma. Other topics of exploration that factor into her work are mental health, cultural responsibility, and the Black experience. To Conni, having a career as a dance artist is inspired by the ability to contribute or change the narrative that our culture carries, and wanting to have the power to make those choices.