Katiti
Katiti King moves through life as she moves through space—with intention, rhythm, and soul. A native New Yorker whose formative years unfolded under Caribbean skies, she absorbed the islands' most profound lesson: that movement is the body's conversation with rhythm, a dialogue woven from sound, silence, and the emphasis that lives between the beats.
Her earliest memories shimmer with music. Her father—an acclaimed composer, musician, and educator—filled their home with both classical precision and Afro-Caribbean fire. Among the luminaries who crossed their threshold was the legendary Pablo Casals, whose words to young Katiti became a north star: "The greatest respect an artist can give to music is to give it life" and "Don't play the notes; play the meaning of the notes." Years later, standing before her own students, Katiti would translate Don Pablo's wisdom into the language of dance: "Don't just execute the movement—communicate the meaning of those movements." This philosophy pulses through everything she teaches, a bridge between technical mastery and expressive truth.
Dance, rhythm, and performance are literally encoded in her DNA. Both of Katiti's parents were accomplished educators across multiple disciplines and classically trained music professionals who graced world stages. They gave her a dual inheritance: the architectural elegance of classical forms and the grounded, ancestral power of traditional Afro-Caribbean culture—two rivers that continue to flow through Ms. King's choreographic vision.
For over 31 years, Katiti served on faculty at Barnard College, teaching Jazz Dance within their world-renowned majors program that serves three Columbia University schools and Barnard College itself. But her journey began even earlier.
Since 1980, as a teenager navigating the dance worlds of NYC and Boston, she was already performing with companies and teaching Simonson methodology—before it became one of the "Top-8" globally recognized dance disciplines, before formal teacher training certification programs even existed. She was there at the beginning, a keeper of the lineage, dancing and teaching across the globe with the kind of devotion that shapes movements into legacies.
Today, Katiti continues to dance, choreograph, develop programming, educate, and mentor diverse audiences at universities, dance schools, workshops, festivals, intensives, in media, and through private classes worldwide. Communicating through movement and teaching others to do so is her mission, her passion, and her honor.
Her extensive training spans Dunham, Simonson, Horton, Graham, Afro-Cuban, and Ballet—a constellation of techniques that informs her multidimensional approach to the art form.
King states with pride: "My approach to teaching, along with my signature movement and flow, is rooted firmly in Simonson methodology and the African diaspora's rich, storied heritage of cultural and ritual significance that continues to inspire and shape Jazz dance and all other styles of dance today." Her signature brand-method guides students into the mind-body relationship through anatomical alignment, technique application, and rhythm connectivity—all while safely communicating movement through space with an unwavering emphasis on injury prevention throughout the dance and movement journey.
As a complement to her storied dance career and following in her father's footsteps—who was among a handful of holistic practitioners active in NYC from the '70s into the 2000s, providing ancient and traditional healing therapies—Katiti is also a respected Wellness & Nutrition Coach and Pilates Instructor. For more than 35 years, she has guided special populations, young and old (including current and retired dancers), helping them navigate chronic conditions and acute injuries toward optimal wellness outcomes through root-cause analysis coupled with bespoke nutrition, exercise, recovery, self-care, and lifestyle-change management protocols and therapeutic plans.
Katiti King doesn't just teach dance. She teaches dancers how to listen—to rhythm, to their bodies, to the meaning that lives inside every gesture. And in that listening, transformation happens.