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Diana Barrios (Director) was born into a part Latin-American, part North-American, part Italian family in Lima, Peru. She grew up in Saint Louis and around Los Angeles and graduated with a degree in Dramatic Arts & Dance from the University of California at Berkeley. Here she discovered her passion for event production and collaboration. After college, Diana moved to New York City where she worked and trained for five years before moving back to Saint Louis. As luck would have it, this timing coincided with the founder and Artistic Director of Atrek Dance Company, Angela Culbertson’s plans to move on to another phase of her career. In 2003, Diana took over the direction of the company and under the new title of Atrek Dance Collective. Under this banner and with a vision toward coalescing a group of local, like-minded artists to share in the responsibility and artistic process of producing progressive modern dance work in Saint Louis, Diana ran Atrek for almost ten years.

In 2013, Diana and key collaborating artists rolled out a new vision for the company and re-branded it as Leverage Dance Theater. Leverage Dance Theater’s programming is designed to explore the intersection of dance and life. Entwined in her vision for the company is a deep commitment to collaboration, education and the development of young artists. Diana’s choreography is more composition and direction than choreography in the traditional sense. She relies heavily on the creative contributions of the dancers to the development of the company’s signature Dance on Site performances which bring a unique, intimate, experiential, site-specific format for experiencing dance to St. Louis audiences.

Diana hopes to inspire young artists to search for groundbreaking ways to inspire, educate and enrich through dance. To this end, Diana has created an extensive offering of arts integrated programs offered by Leverage Dance Theater in elementary schools. These programs teach math, science and literacy through dance. Leverage is also in residency at Intersect Arts Center in the Cherokee neighborhood of St. Louis were they offer free after-school and summer programming to under-served children in the community.