Dr Katrina Rank is an award-winning choreographer and educator based in Naarm, Melbourne, Australia. Her work creates spaces where the imagination flourishes, expressive forces are harnessed and dynamic exchanges occur.

A graduate of the Australian Ballet School, she performed in dance companies in Australia and abroad before returning home to undertake further studies including a Bachelor of Education and a PhD in Contemporary Arts (Deakin University 1994 and 2001). Katrina was the first Australian researcher to complete her doctorate through practice-exegesis, forging the way for many others to research via their creative practices.

Her studies and work across diverse arts forms are embedded into her dynamic collaborative projects with communities, a key area of her practice for 30 years. In 2007 she was the recipient of the Caroline Plummer Community Dance Fellowship, Otago University, NZ and has been the recipient of many valued choreographic residencies since that date. In 2013 she founded Fine Lines Dance, one of the world’s most long-standing and successful dance programs for older dancers. Fine Lines Dance has provided the artists for generative and research-based movement theatre that challenges stereotypes and conventional forms. Since 2013 she has continuously made new work on Fine Lines, with The Right awarded an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community Dance.

In 2014 she began to train and facilitate dance sessions for people living with Parkinson’s disease. She is the founder of the Hampton and Preston Dance for Parkinson’s groups and is a member of Dance for Parkinson’s Australia. With Paris Wages, another Dance for PD certified practitioner, she co-directed and co-choreographed the short film “Stupendous: Dancing Through Parkinson’s” in 2018 which made its American debut in the Frame by Frame Dance Film Festival at the Houston Ballet. In the same year, she began her work facilitating dance in Residential Aged Care and was presented with the prestigious Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance Education. In 2023 she and Paris Wages collaborated once again in the Beaut Ballet Series to bring dancers with PD into The Australian Ballet spaces to do classes, connect with repertoire and meet company choreographers, dancers and educators.

Katrina’s work demonstrates her deep concern about pollution and climate change. In 2016 her practice expanded to incorporate recycled materials into sustainable costume and set design. Initially working with paper, her ambitions evolved to incorporate greater upcycling possibilities using hard plastics (illuminated headpieces for The Archivists, 2018). These experiences propelled deeper interest about the effect of costumes and their materials on the movement of a dancer, calling this paradigm Costumography.