Marianna Pristupa
Co-Founder & CEO
Marianna was born to be a dancer; but never became a dance professional. Instead with her traditional upbringing in the family of a mathematician and an engineer went on to study biochemistry. All her life she pursued dance as a hobby focusing on a few dance genres and even at some point teaching salsa in local clubs in San Francisco.
Marianna carried the idea of Dance Match in her head for 10 years and slowly incubated until she finally decided to launch into action. Once she met Nikita who became the co-founder and CTO, with his relentless execution Dance Match has started to develop even further and has gotten a new set of critical expertise.
Why are you passionate about dance?
When I dance I find a place that connects me to my raw true inner self. The world disappears and I am present in the moment in a fully serene meditative state. When times were challenging, dance is what has gotten me through those times and somehow magically arranged things inside my head in order. I always dreamed to connect my life with dance on a deeper level and Dance Match allows me to do exactly that.
Nikita Chizhov
Co-Founder & CTO
Nikita graduated from the Ural Federal State University, Higher School of Economics with a degree in Crisis Management in 2013.
Since 2013 he has worked as a store manager at Decathlon, parent organization AFM.
From September 2013 until February 2019, he worked as a CEO and was the Founder of the Houseofquest, 3 escape rooms with actors on 2500 square feet in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Since September 2017 he is the Founder of Rehabmaker Corporation. The inventor of the simulator and method for physiotherapy exercises on a wheelchair: https://cutt.ly/patent/
Since August 2020 he is the Co-Founder, CTO of DanceMatch Inc.
Why are you passionate about dance?
Dancing for me is life, this is a state of trance, which is one of my favorite activities in life, I have attended many electronic music festivals. I love to dance to Drum and Bass, Hip Hop, EDM.
