Visiting Faculty

Yana Lewis -
An international ballerina, director and choreographer with over 29 years of teaching experience, Yana Lewis was born in the UK, and has lived in India since 1998. Her dancing career began at the age of 2 in London, and from that moment on dance has been not just been a passion but a way of life. She is also a dedicated practitioner of Iyengar yoga for more than 20 years. She came to India on the 80th birthday of her guru, Shri B. K. S. Iyengar, a visit that sparked off a lasting and deep-seated affinity to India and the beginning of in-depth research into Indian culture and dance.
A gifted teacher with the natural ability to reach out to students of all age groups, Yana is a member of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD), UK, and has successfully trained candidates for examinations for nearly three decades. Yana's teaching career is as vast and varied as is her rare gift of communication. Equally at home floating fairylike with young children or discussing an anatomical problem or injury prevention with adults, Yana's trademark is the extreme sincerity, passion and dedication with which she goes about all her work. Yana was founder and principal of a ballet school in London and is founder and principal of the Yana Lewis Dance Academy in India. She has also taught at several full-time vocational schools in Europe and Russia. Her manifold teaching experience ranges from workshops for the Inner London Education Authority, to children and adults that are physically or mentally challenged, including deaf children and those with learning disabilities both in UK and in India. Yana has raised money for several organisations, including staging a non-stop danceathon for BBC TV's 'Children in need' appeal. She has been assistant director and choreographer for a Dance in Education company in the UK. More recently, Yana has conducted workshops in dance and given lectures on prevention of injury during dance, to the Indian classical dance community all over the country. Yana has performed extensively both on stage and on TV, and has produced and directed her own shows in the UK and India. Her work covers a broad spectrum - from modern dance companies to classical ballet solos playing principal roles in 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Coppelia', 'Swan Lake' and 'Peter and the Wolf'. She has participated in documentaries, videos, training films and commercial advertisements and given performances in all streams of education including schools, hospitals and mental institutions. In 2002, she founded the Yana Lewis Dance Company in India, specialising in classical ballet and jazz, with a diverse repertoire including Hawaiian, African tribal and street jazz.