Vani Iswara

🪔 About

Vani Iswara is an an Indian classical dancer, choreographer, and educator specializing in Bharatanatyam. She is the founder of the Ellora Center for Performing Arts (ECPA) in the USA, with classes conducted in Flower Mound and Coppell areas of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, Texas. Iswara established ECPA in honor of the institute started by her Guru Smt. Rema Shrikant in India, where she previously taught before moving to the United States. Her extensive training includes a Bachelor's and Master's in Performing Arts from MS University, where she was a gold medalist. She specialized in Bharatanatyam under the tutelage of the legendary Padma Bhushan Prof C V Chandrasekhar, and also received blessings from Guru Sri Vedantam Mallikarjuna Sharma and Smt. Rema Shrikant. Beyond her dance education, Iswara holds two additional Master's degrees: one in Clinical Psychology from MS University and another in Dance/Movement Therapy from Columbia College Chicago. Vani Iswara has been instructing students for over 30 years, having commenced her Bharatanatyam teaching career in the United States in 1994 and in the DFW area since 2003. Her dedication to teaching is evident in her impressive legacy of training numerous students for their arangetrams, a significant milestone marking their transition from trainee to performer. As of July 2025, she had guided 98 students through their arangetrams, with her 99th and 100th students, Snigdha Mallajosyula and Shraddha Siddhartha, making their public debuts. Her 50th arangetram student was Shreya Kumaran. Her senior disciples include Rohitha Kaimal and Soundarya Daliparthy. Iswara's imaginative choreographies are noted for their mesmerizing effect on audiences, which she attributes to the rich lineage of her gurus. She was honored with the Sambrahma Puraskar by Sangeetha Sambrahma in Bangalore on January 5, 2025. Through the Ellora Center for Performing Arts, she aims to promote Indian Classical Dance by providing rigorous training for perfection and professionalism, and her academy has grown into a premier dance institute in the Dallas area. Awards & Honours: Sambrahma Puraskar (2025).