Kara’s connections with people, movement and rhythm have been her super powers since childhood. She grew up just north of Boston in the Merrimack Valley with her large Italian-American family providing her with endless love, inspiration, frustration and food. This closeness to family has instilled a deep sense of compassion, responsibility and humor that have forged her strength and sparked a curiosity about people. How do we learn? What makes us feel and think? How can we be better to ourselves, each other and our planet?

Since 2004 Kara has advocated for the relevancy and importance of the arts in today’s world. Believing that dance and the arts are empowering change agents for all of us, she has worked to make creative experiences accessible through non-profit administration and arts education. She has had the pleasure of teaching and programming for people ages 3 - 100+ of various backgrounds and abilities at such institutions as Express Yourself, Inc., The Boston Ballet, Nevins Family of Services, the Cambridge Citywide Senior Center, and The Dance Complex. Other teaching work includes that at Emerson and Endicott Colleges, Colleges of the Fenway, Chewonki Elementary Middle School, and The Waldo Theatre.

As an independent artist she enjoys collaborations, interdisciplinary explorations and community-based work. Her most recent collaborative pieces have included those with her husband, Stephen Serwacki, in which they have woven family, love and humor into a kind of dance experience all their own. With dance collaborators Michael Winward and Allyson Esposito she has performed in Cambridge, MA and Chicago, IL exploring ideas of anonymity and fabric as partner, prop and costume. She and dance collaborator, Tara Weaver, have enjoyed making site-specific work together in conjunction with visual artists. They were commissioned by Dance In The Fells 2013 with artist Carolyn Lewenberg and by Franklin Park Art Grove 2015 with artists Barbara Zeles and Kathleen Driscoll. In 2014 and 2015 they were invited to perform as part of the Harvard Square and Union Square Dance Museums by Calamity Co. Dance. Past solo work has been presented by The Dance Complex’s aMaSSit Choreographic Lab 2018 and the Tiny & Short: a Drop in the Bucket 2017 program. More recently, Kara has developed an interest in how people tell their stories. She created It Goes Like This… a self-produced multi-modal storytelling event that highlighted the life experiences of a diverse group of Boston-area artists. She has also created audio stories by collecting the voices and memories of residents at the Nevins Family of Services in Methuen, MA, providing lasting documentation of these beautiful accounts and an opportunity for residents to be heard by family and community members.

Kara is honored and grateful to be an ensemble member of several New England-based dance companies. She has been a dancer with Benkadi Drum & Dance since 2008, learning about and bringing the cultures and vibrant energy of continental Africa’s music and dance to communities across Massachusetts under the direction of Sory Diabate and Marianne Harkless Diabate. Since 2015 she has also been a member of Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion, an intergenerational collective of dancers and contemporary artists who have performed in such places as Jacob’s Pillow, Boston Memorial Hatchshell, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and countless other in and outdoor spaces. Other companies and choreographers she has worked with include Brian Feigenbaum, SPUNKandCOmpany, InEdit, Danza Orgánica, Luminarium Dance Company, Elm City Dance Collective, Angie Moon Dance Theatre, and Dance Currents, Inc.

Earning her B.A. in Liberal Studies from Endicott College gave Kara the “travel bug” that opened the curiosity and respect for different cultures that she carries into her practice today. She recently earned what may be one of the longest titles for a Masters degree out there -- an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts with a Concentration in Performance Creation -- from Goddard College whose progressive approach to education has greatly influenced her own. Areas of study included African-rooted arts, choreography, storytelling and inclusive and progressive pedagogy. Integrating her Italian-American family into her creative practice was an added bonus of her grad school experience, one that she continues today. Spontaneous, multi-generational kitchen dance parties are one of her favorite things.