Viji Rao

Viji Rao is an internationally acclaimed Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer, educator, and curator with over three decades of experience. She began training at age five under her father and first teacher, Shiva Rao, and at fifteen embraced the Kalakshetra school of Bharatanatyam, studying with eminent Kalakshetra artists including Professor C.V. Chandrasekhar and Bragha Bessell. During eleven years based in the United Kingdom she worked with the Chitraleka Dance Company, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, and Arangham Dance Company. Based in Philadelphia since 2002, she founded and directs Three Aksha, a dance company and educational institute, and has been an artist-in-residence at Girard College since 2008. She has taught at Temple University, Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, and Penn State University, and her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Leeway Foundation. The Philadelphia Inquirer has called her choreography a "technical tour de force." Since 2022 she has curated the All-Indian Dance Festival at Carnegie Hall in New York.