CHANDINI DARBY
Chandini Darby is a performer, choreographer, educator, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The VIVA School. A native of Washington, DC, her artistry centers on movement as personal archaeology and universal language, creating transformative encounters where cultural memory and authentic human connection converge. She has established herself as a visionary leader reshaping dance education and performance to foster systemic change within the industry.
Ms. Darby's foundational training began at the DC Youth Ensemble and continued at Spirit Wings Dance Company. A 2007 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Towson University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance, she received the Washington Post Music and Dance Award in Dance Scholarship. Her professional performance credits include Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Washington Reflections Dance Company, DC Contemporary Dance Theatre/Teatro de Danza Contemporanea and Earl Mosley's Diversity of Dance as well as work by Paul Taylor, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell, Nai Ni Chen, Matthew Rushing, and Michael Uthoff.
Her choreographic vocabulary is characterized by organic groove, rhythmic layering, and beautiful strangeness, rooted in her experience as a Black woman, mother, and cultural advocate within the landscape of contemporary creative practice. Her work has been commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Dance Metro DC, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Atlas Intersections Festival and Arena Stage. As founder of The Beauty for Ashes Project, she develops performance pieces that champion untold and unpopular stories, validating diverse experiences through the power of live art. Her 2017 dance film Hair Like Fall explores Black women's relationship with hair through themes of invisibility, cultural identity, and self-discovery, screening at the Every Woman Biennial Film Festival in NYC and the DC Black Theatre and Arts Festival.
As an educator, Ms. Darby has distinguished herself as a transformative force in dance training. Her students consistently gain acceptance into the nation's top collegiate dance programs and have earned national recognition through the NAACP ACT-SO Achievement Program and numerous academic and artistic scholarship awards, demonstrating her commitment to cultivating both technical excellence and deep artistic intelligence.
Under her artistic direction, The VIVA School has emerged as a pioneering dance education institution in Washington, DC, centering young dancers of color through culturally conscious approaches that encourage them to embrace who they are and where they are from. The school's approach merges world-class dance training with leadership development, empowering a new generation of creative leaders who impact the field from the stage to the board room.
A certified Progressive Ballet Technique Instructor, Ms. Darby now resides in Annapolis, MD with her husband and two children, continuing her mission to inspire creative thought leaders and shift social paradigms through the powerful intersection of dance education and performance art.