Nileeka Gunawardene

Nileeka is Artistic Director and Co-founder of Bollywood Dance London (www.bollywooddancelondon.com). Nileeka trained in Classical, Bhangra and Bollywood dance under the instruction of ‘Bollywood Grooves’ Founder Vandana Alimchandani and Artistic Director Minila Shah. She was part of the Bollywood Grooves team for 7 years and Assistant Manager from 2008-2010. When Bollywood Grooves closed its doors in 2010, Nileeka created Bollywood Dance London (BDL) with fellow dancer Jennie Jethwani to continue providing the best Bollywood teaching, performance and choreography in Central London.

As a teacher, Nileeka is known for her energy, enthusiasm and style; her classes always come with a smile! Nileeka’s aim is to produce an accurate representation of what’s going on in Bollywood right now and she does this by making reference to what is current and paying homage to what has gone before. Nileeka has been dancing for over 13 years and is additionally trained in Hip-Hop, Ballet, Jazz, Tap, Lyrical and Street. She created the Bollywood fusion workout for Bollywood Grooves and is producing a workout for Fitness TV in 2011.

Nileeka teaches the flagship BDL Pure Bollywood Classes on Tuesdays at Pineapple 7-8pm and Thursdays at Danceworks 7-8pm. She also manages BDL courses and the choreographs the BDL performance troupe.

Choreography accomplishments include: The Vitality Show (Earls Court), London's Big Dance (Westfield), Move IT (Earl’s Court), The Mayor of London’s India Now Festival (The Scoop), Canary Wharf’s Indian Summer, Career Academies (The IndigO2), Taste of London (Regent’s Park) and The Regent Street Festival, The Alan Titchmarsh Show (ITV), Big Brother (Channel 4).