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SHAINA CANTINO is a dance artist, improviser, movement educator and Licensed Massage Therapist/Craniosacral Therapist based in western Massachusetts and Portland, Maine. She holds an MFA in dance from Smith College and is a graduate of the National Theatre Institute and Kenyon College (BA, Distinction in Dance). Cantino is a recent recipient of a New England Foundation for the Arts’ New England Dance Fund grant for the development of a duet piece, in collaboration with performer Leah Fournier and Oregon-based theater artist Rose Proctor. The duet premiered at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton, MA this past July. Cantino’s choreography and performance have been presented at performance venues and universities across the country, most recently in the Smith College Faculty Concert. Her performance is noted for its understated humor and off-balance physicality. Cantino will be teaching Improvisation and Contemporary Technique courses at Bowdoin and Colby Colleges this coming semester. She has taught semester courses in contemporary technique (levels I-V), composition and Contact Improvisation (CI) at Wesleyan University and Keene State, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, as well as weekly adult classes at School for Contemporary Dance and Thought (SCDT) and intensive CI workshops in Arezzo and Cagliari, Italy and Montreal, Canada. Cantino has had the pleasure of collaborating with Aretha Aoki, Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Paul Matteson, Colleen Thomas, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Kate Seethaler, Joy Davis, Leah Fournier, and Sara Coffin. She has intensively trained with Kirstie Simpson (2018), Sara Shelton Mann and Abby Crain (2018, 2016), Susan Rethorst (2016), Bebe Miller Company (2015), St. Petersburg State Theater Academy (2009), Kathleen Hermesdorf/Sara Shelton Mann/Keith Hennessy (2009), American Conservatory Theater (2008), and Bates Dance Festival (2007).

​Photo credit: Joshua Sugiyama