Petra Zanki is a Croatian-American, award-winning choreographer and immigrant artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA in Choreography from CODARTS University in Rotterdam (2023) and is a recipient of multiple prestigious grants, including NYFA (2025), FCA (2021 and 2025), and the BAC/Brooklyn Arts Fund (2024 and 2025). She currently holds residencies as Artist-in-Residence with Wade & Tisch/NYU (2025), Choreographer-in-Residence with NOosphereArts, Brooklyn (2025), and MOtIVE. Before relocating to New York City in January 2020, just two months before the pandemic, Petra was living and creating in Seattle. There, she received the BST Residency from the University of Washington/Dance, participated in the IMP Series at Velocity Dance Center, and completed Base Residencies in 2017 and 2018. She also earned the James Ray Residency Award (2018–2019), alongside grants from 4Culture, smART Ventures, and the Bossak-Heilbron Foundation. Her work has been presented at notable venues in New York City, including Estrogenius Festival NYC, PRELUDE Festival/CUNY, Movement Research/Judson Church, Dixon Place, Mark Morris Dance Center, CPR, and DanceFest Main Stage; and in Seattle at On the Boards, SIDF, Base, and Velocity Dance Center. Petra was nominated as Best Upcoming Choreographer at Zagreb Dance Platform and has received multiple European residencies, including a two-year choreographic scholarship from ICK-Amsterdam/Emio Greco and support from the Croatian HIPP-TSP. Her work has been presented internationally across Europe, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Critical writing on her work has appeared in Tanz, Performance Art Journal (MIT Press), Performance Research Journal, The Bomb, and Frakcija. Growing up in Croatia during the war, Petra’s artistic focus remains the transformation of pain into landscapes of beauty, creating work that resonates for the benefit of humanity.