the following is a a series of selected works that reflect my artistic creations across various mediums, collaborations, and landscapes
- What falls beneath the surface
- Hello Beautiful Stranger
- Under Pressure I Become Mercury
- YelkaraM: Weaving the ancestral Body
- breathing bridges
- About Me
What falls beneath the surface
/INSTALLATION & FILM role: director,writer,performer
is a visual journey that metabolizes grief and fear through freediving, dance, poetry and film. This project has been shared as a short film, as an installation on a boat in Berlin, in a pool in Oakland, projected on the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and lives in an online publication.
What Falls Beneath the Surface Short Film, 2024
Hello Beautiful Stranger Short Film, Berlin 2024
2 strangers find resonance in a far away place. Like a faded memory, they find it essential to time travel to unearth a calling mystery. Through the wisdom of the lianas, guidance of the cactus flower and Medusa, the strangers confront their own neurocolonization and pass through a queer fantastical re-wilding, waking up the strangers that live in themselves. Through improvisation, Kizomba, Contact Improvisation, and Acrobatic Contemporary floorwork, they dance through portals that open to sisterhood, lovership, and beasts in themselves they didn't know existed.
Is this our hope or survival? Hello Beautiful Stranger was created and performed over the course of 3 years in Berlin(GR), Brussels (BG), Bordeaux (FR), and Berkeley (USA) see trailer below for theater performance version
Under Pressure I Become Mercury
/ FILM role: choreographer, performer
YelkaraM: Weaving the ancestral Body
/PERFORMANCE role: choreographer, dancer
is a dance and video-mapping performance that focuses on Honduran Lenca indigenous rituals about water protection and weaving traditions reinterpreted by a group of artists with Honduran heritage. The performance aims to highlight our ancestors' practices to protect their environment and maintain the balance between the physical and spiritual worlds. By intertwining movement, rituals, and visuals, Yelkaram celebrates the strength of the Lenca women to recover and safeguard their traditions and natural resources in the face of extractivism.
Artistic direction: Diana Lara Performance collaborators: Diana Lara, Kriss Rulifson, Isadora Paz, Ronice Stratton Visuals and video mapping: Gabriel Vallecillo Music editing: John Rodgers Light design: Mary Clare Blake-Booth
Performed at: Spore Initiative, Berlin November 2024 ODC Theater, San Francisco June 2025 Dream Farm Commons, Oakland, Oct 2025 Eastside Arts Alliance, Oakland Oct 2025 Upcoming: ICAF, Rotterdam, March 2026
About Me
Kriss (they/them) is a non-binary contemporary movement artist, aquatic dancer, and transdisciplinary maker and educator. Their love for disorientation has inspired them to dance suspended off bridges, free fall into the depths of the sea, and plummet into hundreds of bodies over the many years of practicing contact improvisation. Through their various movement muses, they are constantly asking, “ How can I be in the most available state to receive and respond to a constantly changing environment?” Their current research spirals in and out of the process of re-membering, life cycles , and embodied resistance. Kriss received their B.S. from UC Davis in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior and then studied Expressive Arts Therapy At the Tamalpa Institute. They studied contemporary dance in Berlin and Tanzfabrik Schule and are an Axis Syllabus Teacher Candidate. Their aquatic dance is shaped by their practice in free diving as well as aquatic therapy techniques of Janzu and Fluid Presence. Currently they freelance as a dancer, performer, and educator locally and internationally, as well as advocate for safe housing for survivors of domestic violence at Gum Moon in SF Chinatown. Their work has been received in Germany, France, Slovakia, and Hungary, Costa Rica, and across the SF Bay Area. kristenrulifson.com