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Petra Zanki / pethərah zahnkee/ born June 18, 1977, in Split, Ex-Yugoslavia, is a Croatian American artist, choreographer, dancer and writer.

Often very biographical, her immersive multidisciplinary performances combine abstract movement, sound, light and words, and stand between installation and dance performance. Growing up in Croatia during the war, Petra's main interest remains the transformation of pain into landscapes of beauty for the benefit of humanity.

Daughter of a sailor and boat mechanic Zdenko Zanki and lab technician Ankica Zanki, sister Blanka Zanki. She was married to Seattle poet and performer Allen Johnson.

Early life
Petra spent her childhood in the city of Split. Her family, strained by the lack of finances and economical upheaval in the country of Yugoslavia after Tito's death, moved to the island of Vis, where they lived in the small attic that her father repurposed into a living space.

When the unrests in former Yugoslavia started in summer of 1989 both of her parents lost job and her family were living on the occupied island of Vis in Dalmatia during the Croatian War of Independence, The island was one of main military basis for the Yugoslav army and the entire population of the islands were held hostages during that time. In the times in which her family were hiding deserted soldiers in their home, sleeping all together in one room, and fearing for their lives, living through extreme insecurity and poverty, Petra became acutely aware of the possibility of dying and the fragility of life and all political concepts. At the age of 14 she moved to live alone in Split for school and attended II Gymnasium, taking care of herself and her sister who joined her two years later.

In 2002 she graduated in French Language and Literature and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb and continued theatre studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III university.

Career
During her early university years she became actively involved in contemporary dance scene in Croatia. Understanding that body can most times express when the words cannot, she learned from some of the best choreographers in the country such as Milana Broš, Irma Omerzo, Iva Nerina-Sybilla, Žak Valenta, and fr:Kilina Cremona.

She continued to pursue her theatre studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris in 2002-2003 and started attending professional dance classes at the CND.

In 2003 Petra returned back to Croatia, and got engaged in building the Croatian Independent Arts scene. Between 2003 and 2006 she founded and led multiple art organizations in the post-war Republic of Croatia, including Banana Gerila and Clubture. Together with dancers and choreographers Selma Banich, Sandra Banić, Silvia Marchig, Željka Sančanin, Sanja Tropp, and Zrinka Uæbinec, she founded and ran all-women Eks-scena, an independent dance and choreography working platform for research and education. Eks-scena provided a platform for young talented artists, primarily dancers, choreographers, and performers to make contemporary dance, which was almost non-existent in pre-war Yugoslavia. It also supported artists from other fields (musicians, video artists, etc.), thus opening up a space for dancers in post-war Croatia to make multimedia research projects. The platform was present in all projects in Croatia that were related to contemporary dance between 2000-2010.

During that time Petra was dancer, performer and movement assistant to some of the most radical and avant-garde Croatian theatre directors such as Oliver Frljić, Borut Šeparović, and theatre group Shadow Casters. Her international dancing and performing career started when she joined the Slovenian theater group Via Negativa under the direction of theater director Bojan Jablanovec. From 2004-2010, she co-created and performed extensively with Via Negative including Slovenian actors and dancers Marko Mandić, Katarina Stegnar Barbara Matijević, and Grega Zorc, presenting on stages across Europe and in the US in “Would would Not” (2005), "Viva Verdi" (2006), "Four Deaths" (2007) and "Out" (2008).

In 2009 Petra started her own choreographing career, collaborating with German dancer and scholar Britta Wirthmüller, and at that time created performances "Holding on to" (2009), Vierfusser (2010), Silent Walk "Paces" which secured her the title of the best young choreographer in 2010 on Zagreb Dance Platform, and granted multiple residencies across Europe. In 2012, Petra won a two-year choreographic scholarship from ICK-Amsterdam/Emio Greco and Croatian HIPP-TSP, in 2012-2013. Her works have been shown across Europe, US, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Petra moved to the US in 2013 to marry poet and performer Allen Johnson. After the couple’s separation, she continued living and working in Seattle.

From 2015 til 2020 Petra created a trilogy "365", "Pleasant Place" and "Freight." The work describes her first couple of years in the US. She has been extensively collaborating with American musician and composer Benoît Pioulard who wrote music for her performances. She presented her works in cities New York, Seattle, and New Orleans at sites / events like Movement Research at Judson Church, Wow Café Theatre, On the Boards, Seattle International Dance Festival, 12th Ave Arts/Washington Ensemble Theatre, Base, and Velocity Dance Center. Texts about her works have been published in Dance and Performance magazines such as Tanz, Performance Art Journal-MIT, Performance Research Journal, The Bomb, Kretanja, and Frakcija.

Curators’ piece
"The Curators' Piece" (A Trial against Art) is a controversial performance that Petra developed together with Croatian-Bosnian theatre director Tea Tupajic, which casted international performing arts curators as performers. Relying on the relations between the artists, the curators and the audience, the project dealt with the production of contemporary performing arts and the possibility of art's influence on today's society. This first ever world production that questions the role of theatre curator and his position in the performing art field, included some of the today’s most prominent contemporary performance curators. It was accompanied by the first book on curating performing arts "Curating Performing Arts" ed. F. Malzacher, T. Tupajić, P. Zanki. The book had its second edition and inspired a series of symposia on curating performing arts and incited creation of performing art curation studies across Europe.

Awards and Honors
Between 2010 and 2013, Petra received numerous residency awards across Europe. In the US, Petra has received the following residency awards: bst residency from The University of Washington School of Dance, IMP series at the Velocity Dance Center, Base Residencies in 2017 and 2018, and the James Ray Residency Award in 2018-2019. Petra is a recipient of 4CULTURE, smART ventures, and Bossak-Heilbron Foundation Grants, and she was nominated for the NEA Creativity Connects Fellowship (2018) and James W. Ray Venture Project Awards (2018).