Praneetha Akula

About the Artist

Praneetha Akula is a teaching artist who connects cultures through dance and her experience as an educator. She studied Bharatanatyam with her mother from the age of three and performed her formal dance debut at eleven. As a senior dancer with the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company, she choreographed for the annual Velocity DC festival and traveled across the U.S. with the company. A graduate of Wake Forest University, she received a Japan Fulbright Memorial Scholarship, earned a master’s degree in teaching English as Second Language from American University, and taught for over a decade in Washington, D.C. public schools. She has taught workshops to young students on political leaders in the Indian diaspora, worked as the scriptwriter, choreographer, and co-producer for original renditions of the Ramayana at the Sidwell Friends School, directed productions of “Lion King, Jr.” at the Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland, taught yoga and Bharatanatyam in corporate wellness classes, and helped senior populations in Washington, D.C. learn the benefits of Indian classical dance. Praneetha presented an arts workshop for K-12 teachers at the national Arts Integration Conference 2021 with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Center. She is currently a teaching artist with Story Tapestries and has been featured in the Baltimore Sun as a Changemaker.