During the past decade, Kendra Meiki has established herself as a prominent member of the Shreveport-Bossier City arts and business communities. Kendra is Owner/Director of Shreveport Dance Academy (SDA), a well-respected dance training facility in southeast Shreveport. She also serves as Artistic Director of the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet (SMB), one of our community’s oldest continually operating arts organizations.

In 1999, at the age of 20, Kendra Meiki became the owner of Shreveport Dance Academy. Under Kendra’s leadership, SDA has grown from an enrollment of around 100 to educate more than 450 dance students each year, and the studio employs a staff of 8-10 teachers in a variety of dance disciplines. In September 2008, SDA moved into a brand-new, state of the art 10,000 square foot dance education facility featuring 5 spacious dance studios.

Kendra is a registered teacher with the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) of London, one of only a handful in Louisiana. She trains dozens of dancers in the rigorous RAD classical ballet syllabus, and her students have been enormously successful in the annual exams sponsored by the Royal Academy.

In 2010, Kendra was named a Fellow in Dance by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council, and was also chosen as “Young Professional of the Year” by the Shreveport- Bossier Chamber of Commerce. In September 2011, Shreveport Dance Academy was chosen as one of the Chamber’s “Small Businesses of the Year.”

In addition to her work with SDA and SMB, Kendra is a dedicated community volunteer who has worked with the Junior League of Shreveport-Bossier, the Red River Revel, the Volunteers of America LightHouse Program, and the Eden Gardens Elementary Magnet PTA. She is committed to excellence in arts education for the Shreveport- Bossier community and works hard to make classical ballet accessible to all of our citizens.