Linda Yudin, MA is an award-winning artistic director and co-founder of Viver Brasil Dance Company. Through her rigorous training and research (since 1986), she connects the Candomblé traditions of music, dance, song and myths with innovative stage presentations for Viver Brasil. Her principal Afro-Brazilian dance teachers are Mestre King, Luiz Badaró, Rosangela Silvestre and Dona Cici of the Pierre Verger Foundation. Yudin has appeared in Janet Jackson’s Escapade music video and performed with Viver Brasil. She was a consultant for the PBS series, Dancing, and has conducted dance workshops and lectured about Brazilian dance throughout the US and South Africa.

Yudin is the recipient of two Durfee Foundation grants and secured funding from the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project, the Irvine Foundation/Dance USA, Aeromexico, Southwest Airlines and Amgen Foundation, among others. She is adjunct faculty at Santa Monica College and has been awarded a faculty fellowship.  Linda leads annual educational tours to Bahia to study the roots of Afro-Brazilian expressive culture with Viver Brasil’s Dance and Music Travel Programs. Linda has the pleasure of teaching Afro-Brazilian dance at the Pierre Verger Foundation in Bahia since 2006 and was a recent guest speaker at the State of Bahia's Cultural Foundation's Dance School in 2007.