Our Royal Academy of Dance Certified Faculty

Founder & Artistic Director | Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Fulbright Specialist & Youth Ambassador Mentor | US Department of State 

Dr. Vivienne Lim entered the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus as a small child, beginning formal training at three and growing up inside its graded structure. Raised in New York City, she experienced ballet alongside a rich cultural landscape, and those early examinations, from the first tentative Pre Primary classes through the demanding higher levels, did more than refine technique; they asked for musicality, concentration, and a quiet courage she now looks for in her students.​

As a young dancer, she worked with teachers whose roots lay in The Royal Ballet School, most influentially Valerie Taylor Barnes. In Taylor Barnes’s studio she discovered that rigor and kindness need not be at odds: corrections could be precise yet humane, and a child could feel fully seen while working at the edge of ability. That blend of high standards and warmth has stayed with her more than any single role or variation.​

Her ballet life has since unfolded across many classrooms and communities. She has led programs for young children, rehearsed teenagers for examinations and performances, and welcomed adults returning to the studio after long gaps. Again and again, the work has confirmed a simple conviction: a ballet class is never only about tendus and port de bras, but also about offering a steady rhythm in which young people explore discipline, collaboration, and imagination. Within that frame, assessment becomes a way to show strengths and next steps rather than to divide dancers into winners and losers.​

Time spent observing classes at The Royal Ballet School and training at the Royal Academy of Dance headquarters deepened this view. Watching how classical repertory was passed on, with attention to phrasing, style, and each dancer’s temperament, reinforced her sense of ballet as a living language. The vocabulary may be shared across continents, but each dancer speaks it in a distinct accent shaped by culture, history, and the stories they carry into the studio.​

Alongside studio work, she has sought frameworks that place artistic practice within wider questions of well-being. Studying with Professor Robert Waldinger’s Building a Life of Wellness program at Harvard Medical School and diplomatic training in Geneva and London encouraged her to see the studio as a small social world: a place where relationships, purpose, and daily habits meet. These strands inform how she structures classes, speaks with families, and helps young dancers meet both success and setback with steadiness.​

In Honolulu, she founded the Royal Academy of Ballet, Hawaiʻi’s only RAD certified school. Here the RAD syllabus provides a clear spine, while daily work is shaped by local voices. Children arrive with languages and family stories from across the Pacific and beyond; class becomes a conversation between inherited tradition and lived experience. Exercises at the barre sit alongside talk of island life, and performances invite students to bring their sense of story to classical music and line.​

From this studio, some students have gone on to scholarships at European schools and international summer intensives, supported by families, teachers, and a community that values the arts. Others carry what they have learned discipline, musicality, the habit of turning up into different fields. No less important are the quieter shifts: the shy child who steps from the back row to the center and the teenager who discovers that progress comes from steady work rather than quick results.​

Her academic and diplomatic work, including doctoral study in Geneva, further study in Oxford, and specialized training in multilateral diplomacy and human rights, sits alongside her daily teaching. Through programs on the Human Rights Council, United Nations protocol, and international diplomacy in Geneva and London, she developed tools for listening across cultures and navigating complex conversations with care. The same principles now guide her roles as a Fulbright Specialist and United States Youth Ambassador mentor with the United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, where she collaborates with partners abroad on projects grounded in mutual understanding and shared responsibility, including youth initiatives with UNICEF in Central America, and inform how she shapes rehearsals, parent meetings, and student leadership at the Royal Academy of Ballet.​

For families arriving at the school, what they meet is not a list of titles but a particular way of holding the work. In the Royal Academy of Ballet studio, young dancers from many of Hawaiʻi’s communities stand at the same barre, following a syllabus shared with peers in cities they may only know by name. Under Dr. Lim’s guidance, the training is serious but not severe, rooted in a lineage that includes teachers like Valerie Taylor Barnes, yet open to the voices and cultures in the room. In that meeting between classical vocabulary and local lives, the school finds its character and purpose.