Yamini Kalluri is a world-class professional Kuchipudi dancer based in New York City where she teaches, performs and trains full time. She offers performances, workshops, intensives and production direction internationally with an aim to bring a new face and a bigger representation to Kuchipudi globally.
Raised in Hyderabad, India, Yamini Kalluri has been celebrated by the New York Times and BBC as being a Kuchipudi sensation. A disciple of legendary guru, Padmasri Dr. Sobha Naidu, Yamini began exhibiting signs of her extraordinary talent and dedication to dance at a very early age. At the age of 12 she not only began performing throughout India but also began teaching at Dr. Sobha Naidu's School. She went on to complete a certification course in Kuchipudi from Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University, Hyderabad with distinctions in 2013 and further refined her style under the mentorship of the renowned Kuchipudi guru Vempati Ravi Shankar. At 18 she began performing internationally at various prestigious festivals, offering workshops in the UK, the US, Russia, Argentina and Canada. A world-class dancer, Yamini is known for her grace, agility and uncompromising perfection. Aiming to bring a new face to Kuchipudi, her ambition and passion led her to move to New York where she now teaches, performs and trains in ballet and modern dance at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary dance full time. Yaminiís training in western dance styles has led to invitations to teach a Kuchipudi master workshop at the Martha Graham school and several other contemporary dance companies in New York City. In exploring various disciplines of dance and music in the west Yamini has not only developed her own unique style and technique but has also expanded and diversified her dance repertoire by collaborating with many talented choreographers and musicians such as Emmy Award Winner, George Faison in creating a production about Gandhi, Rasa String Quartet which was founded at the New England Conservatory, Reena Esmail, an American composer who works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music and various other western classical music composers and musicians.
Yamini has founded Kritya Dance with the mission to empower up and coming artists to take Kuchipudi to global platforms. Yamini envisions a new school of thought for Kuchipudi with more awareness of the body, mind and soul. She is taking several nuances from ballet and modern dance to find her own technique and bring about a new age of Kuchipudi which is more relevant to a newer and global generation. Vempati Chinnasatyam , Rukmini Devi Arundale, Akram Khan,Shantala Shivalingappa and Igor Moiseyev are some of her inspirations when it comes to innovation for evolution. Yamini sees Kritya as a budding conservatory and incubatory for challenging experimentation and also as a means for dancers to immerse themselves to find their truest form of expression.
