Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Shanira started dancing at the age of 13 and graduated from the University of South Florida with her Bachelor in Fine Arts with a concentration in Modern dance performance and a General Business Administration Certificate in 2020. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City where she performed work along side SammyJ Dance. Most recently she was in the Ensemble of Rudolph the Red Nosed-Reindeer, and is currently working on a Salsa Partnering Team.
     While at USF, she was awarded the Michelle Vargas Memorial Scholarship, the Frye Scholarship, and the Victoria Catherine Selden Dance Scholarship. She was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with a variety of faculty, performing artists, and international artists in the field, including Charles Anderson, Andrew Carroll, Michael Foley, Wanjiru Kamuyu, Bliss Kohlmyer, John Parks, Kevin Quinaou, and Andee Scott. She also had the fortuity to perform in many settings both nationally and internationally.
      In 2019 she attended the Dance in Paris summer program through USF in which she was immersed in the culture and Parisian lifestyle, as well as the diverse dance scene. Here, she continued to work on her craft, creating a solo inspired by a route taken in the Montmartre area. This experience provided new avenues of learning, understanding and creativity to spur. This lended itself to her senior choreographic work, in which she decided to merge two parts of her identity into one. Bringing Latin Social Dance and Modern concert dance was no easy feat, but the final result proved to be worth the effort. In this time she found her long term choreographic goal, merging the two styles into one and challenging the audiences' expectations of what dance is and when it happens.
       While at USF, she took on multiple leadership roles, including vice-president and marketing chair of the Dance Education Organization. She has taught at Elite Dance Academy and Star Pointe Dance Academy, located in South Florida, and for the Palm Beach County school systems, as well as Latin Passion Dance Academy, in Orlando, FL. She hopes to continue her growth as an artist by truly immersing herself in the performance and choreographic aspect of the field.