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Karima Essa

A three-time Canadian National Dance champion, Karima Essa is Vancouver’s very own Bollywood star. An incredibly charismatic and passionate performer, choreographer and instructor, she has used her one-of-a-kind Bollywood talent to entertain diverse audiences at festivals, theatres and in schools across Canada.  In 2014, her love for Bollywood took her to the screens in Mumbai, India, as a two-time finalist on Omni TV’s reality show, Bollywood Star. With style, grace and a flair for the dramatic, she has been captivating adult and young audiences for decades.

Since first showcasing her Bollywood Star School show in schools in 2018, she has performed this show in 500+ schools, theatres and festivals across BC and Alberta. Karima’s new focus is on celebrating that all bodies can dance by bringing the Body Positivity movement to Bollywood Dance in schools and communities.

This beautiful land on which we gather, play and live, is the ancestral, traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx (Okanagan) peoples, who have been here for thousands of years.