wanda lee evans

Artistic Director

Wanda-Lee Evans, accepted the role of director of Kittsville Youth Foundation Dance and Cultural Arts Program in August of 1997. Her long association with the program pre-dates Kittsville's beginnings, because it was the 12 years old Wanda-Lee who started studying dance with Eartha Kitt in a small dance studio in Beverly Hills. She continued her studies with Ms. Kitt after Eartha founded the Kittsville Youth Foundation Program at the Mafundi Institute in Watts after the riots there of 1965. Under the guidance of her mother, Ella Mae Evans, co-founder and co-coordinator of KYF, Ms Kitt and UCLA, Wanda-Lee embarked on a professional performing and teaching career.

At age 19 Wanda-Lee started her first teaching experience with Kittsville students while attending UCLA. Her professional dance career started with the Gloria Newman Dance Theatre while still a senior at UCLA. After graduating from UCLA, she started her professional teaching career, first at Chapman University in Santa Ana, California and then on to Mt. San Antonio College in Diamond Bar, California. Additional teaching included Los Angeles Unified School District and her current and continuous, since 1974, teaching assignment at East Los Angeles College. The dancing lead to singing and acting, which she continues to do.

Her performance credits include: theatre...Timbuktu (Eartha Kitt's understudy), Pal Joey (with Lena Horne), film...Brother, Bless the Child, Music From Another Room, The Net, White Man's Burden; television...Threat Matrix, The Division, Will & Grace, The Practice, ER, NYPD, Arliss, Sparks, numerous national commercials and more.