An Oregon native, Bryaunna Kostelnik began studying dance, developing choreography, and observing pedagogy at a young age. Their early career began nationally with a lead role as Ms Corry in a Disney World Production of Mary Poppins and internationally as part of a seven city Austrian tour with the Tanzsommer Dance Festival. In the coming years, they continued to train and perform with Quickstyle Studios in Oslo, Norway, the Chapters Intensive in Chicago under Talia Favia, b12 in Berlin, Germany, and Deltebre Dansa outside Barcelona, Spain. Post-graduation from Oregon State University in June of 2021, Kostelnik has continued to work professionally throughout the Pacific Northwest with OPENSPACE, push/FOLD, ProLAB Dance, and Southern Oregon Dance Collective, performing work both nationally and globally by Franco Nieto, Victor Quijada (RUBBERBANDance), Noelle Kayser, Samuel Hobbs, Jaci Royal, Wes Veldink, Greg Russell, and Tessandra Chavez as well as collaborated in choreographic work by Leo Leorus, Anton Lachky (Puzzlework), Jasmin Vardimon, and Elijah Labay. Throughout their time working as a creative director, mentor, and teacher, they have found value in opening channels of expression especially among queer identifying and gender nonconforming folk; thus, in 2022 they initiated COLLISIONS, a collaborative, multimedia project with 25 artists within the Willamette Valley. This project acted not only to build an inclusive dialogue around queer bodies in art but to also reconnect the creative community post-COVID19 and raise funds for LGBTQIA+ refugees during a surge of the Russo-Ukrainian War in February of 2022. They will continue to launch community driven projects like this in the coming years.
Currently, Kostelnik continues their work with OPENSPACE as company artist for their 2023-2024 season.