Shaina grew up dancing at a studio in Southern California, where she competed in jazz, tap, ballet, lyrical, contemporary, and hip-hop. In 2008, she participated in the teacher assistant program and began instructing dance at that time. Shaina earned her bachelors of arts in dance from UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, where she intensely studied modern, classical ballet, jazz, improvisation, choreography, and more. She was a member of UC Irvine’s CA dance crew for two years, as well as Boogiezone Breed’s professional exhibition hiphop company for another two years. Shaina concluded her time at UC Irvine by producing her own senior thesis show titled “Freedom in the Ambiguity.” She casted, choreographed, performed, staged, directed, marketed, and chose costumes and lighting for the show. Her original choreographic works have also been presented at the McCallum Choreography Festival, Laguna Beach Art Festival, and various competitions around Southern California.
After college, Shaina joined Entity Contemporary Dance Company for two years, and was a part of the company’s first evening length show titled “Braxon Vs. Oregon”. During her time in Los Angeles, she also performed in Matt Cady’s evening length show titled “Highly Flammable” at the Nate Holden theatre and Nokia Theatre.
In 2015, Shaina travelled to Beijing, China to teach at a performing arts school for one semester. She taught jazz, dance technique, and improvisation to Chinese natives ages 12-30 years-old. She created her own syllabus, class structure, class rules, and concluded the semester by requiring students to critically think and write an essay about why they are passionate about dance, and how their passion for dance changes the world. She used a translator and responded to every student’s essay in Chinese characters.
Shaina is very passionate about early childhood education and loves to teach young children to dance. She was a nanny for four years where she got to observe early childhood development up-close, and was grateful to be an integral part of the process.
Currently, Shaina works in fitness and wellness, is a certified personal trainer, a certified yoga instructor, and a certified nutrition coach. She has instructed fitness at Pixar, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and most recently as a fitness coach at Google San Francisco.
