Artist · Author · Choreographer
His professional career began in 2008, when he joined The Sarasota Ballet after representing the United States at the Rudolf Nureyev International Ballet Competition in Budapest. That same year, the State of Texas / Office of the Governor formally recognized his selection to represent Texas internationally at the competition. His formation included working with Gilbert Mayer of the Paris Opera Ballet; Stanton Welch of Houston Ballet; Royal Ballet prima ballerina Margaret Barbieri; choreographer Dominic Walsh; and Desmond Richardson of Complexions Contemporary Ballet.
Across classical and contemporary repertory, Nava became known for theatrical intelligence, technical precision, and emotionally lucid performance. He performed works by André Prokovsky, George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Dame Ninette de Valois, John Cranko, and Sir Peter Wright.
“David Nava’s clean technique boasts perfect fifth positions after every step and is only enhanced by his beautiful facilities, which include long lines and beautiful feet. His arabesques are cause for applause.”
Read the 2011 review ↗
Principal, soloist, and featured roles include The Boyfriend in Matthew Bourne’s Boutique; Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15; The Lover in Antony Tudor’s Lilac Garden; Robert North’s Troy Game; and Cassio in Peter Darrell’s Othello. Contemporary credits include Dominic Walsh’s Trilogy and Napoletani, and Leymis Wilmott’s In Flight and Aftermath.
A major injury to both ankles interrupted Nava’s early ballet career. During recovery in 2012, he underwent what he describes as a near-death experience: accepting that his physical life had ended, encountering an “absolute beingness,” and then feeling vast consciousness condense as he returned to his body. He recounts the experience in Satori — My Brush With Infinity.
He returned from the experience with an urgent need for language. On the path to finding answers, he met Anthony Cowan, who would become a close friend and Pranic Healing mentor, as well as a bridge to anthroposophy, mysticism, comparative religion, global spiritual practices, and structured energetic-healing traditions. The name Navaji, lovingly given by Anthony, came to mark this new path.
The search became an interdisciplinary practice. Inner images became layered paintings; movement became a way to investigate consciousness through the body; and storytelling made difficult spiritual questions available to others.
In 2021, Navaji earned a Bachelor of Arts from The University of Texas at Austin. By then, he had developed a self-directed body of painting that he would present through Big Medium’s 2021 Austin Studio Tour. That same year he joined Austin ISD as a visual art teacher, bringing the perspective of a working artist into the elementary classroom and treating arts education as cultural stewardship and an act of possibility.
A founding dance artist with Ventana Ballet from 2018 to 2026, Navaji became Resident Choreographer in 2023 and Assistant Director in 2024. In leadership, he led professional company class and rehearsals, coached classical technique, contemporary styling, interpretation, and repertory, and helped cultivate the technical and performance standards for which the ensemble became known. His role also extended beyond dance-making into dramaturgy, scenic design, costuming, visual development, and hands-on production.
As Ventana’s productions grew in scale, Navaji helped translate choreographic ideas into complete theatrical environments. Ventana described KOMOREBI as the first project it hosted to broaden the company’s platform into the design and production aspects of a work. Navaji served as the production’s Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Producer while also creating its costume design, set design and construction, digital backdrop, and music mix. That interdisciplinary model continued through later company productions, where his contributions included assistant direction, rehearsal direction, costuming, scenic work, graphic design, photography, and production development.
Founded in 2017, ATMA Moves is his methodology for bringing energetic awareness into professional performance. At its core is Pranic Dance, an original movement practice developed through the integration of Pranic Healing with a professional foundation rooted in classical ballet and contemporary dance lineages. Navaji describes the work as both a somatic study of incarnation and an ethic of energy: training the body not only as an instrument of expression, but as a vessel of conscious perception, energetic responsibility, and service. The methodology brings classical ballet and contemporary technique into dialogue with breathwork, esoteric principles, subtle anatomy, meditation, Tai Chi–influenced movement, and conscious conditioning. Grounded in compassionate rigor, the practice replaces cruelty and comparison with reverence and disciplined care, refining strength, mobility, nervous-system regulation, and technical precision while awakening subtler layers of awareness. Dancers work with weight, timing, intention, emotional presence, and energetic impact as inseparable parts of technique.
The evening-length KOMOREBI became the fullest expression of this philosophy. Drawing on nature, his family’s Indigenous roots in South Texas, and experiences of trauma and recovery, Navaji wrote, choreographed, produced, designed, and built the immersive work. He trained the cast through ATMA Moves and shaped its costume, sound, projection, and scenic world with the care of a healing space. The 2023 premiere included five mainstage performances and two additional interactive children’s presentations.
“KOMOREBI… altogether possessed the intense beauty that makes ballet so beloved of so many.”
Read the KOMOREBI review ↗
Across his years with Ventana Ballet, Navaji’s design work encompassed full sets, scenic elements, original and reconstructed costumes, styling, graphic design, and production imagery. In works including UNDEAD, ALLUVIUS, and Frostbite, he helped develop the visual language and practical production systems needed to carry increasingly ambitious work from rehearsal room to stage.
Individual artists and arts organizations regularly seek him out as a rehearsal coach, creative advisor, production consultant, designer, and hands-on collaborator. He helps artists clarify ideas, deepen performance, shape theatrical environments, and carry ambitious projects from concept to stage.
That work began with Ventana Ballet and expanded across Austin’s independent arts community, including Red Nightfall Dance Theatre, founded by Dorothy O’Shea Overbey. In the 2024 ballet MoonFall, Navaji performed the title role and designed the set—uniting performance, visual storytelling, and production support within one work.
“Nava… has the quicksilver emotionality characteristic of great actors… He is a natural.”
Read the MoonFall review ↗
In 2025, Navaji co-produced the Sharanagathi Festival of Arts, Austin’s annual celebration of South Indian classical arts presented by Temple of Fine Arts Texas and directed by Sivakami Sreenivasan. The collaboration reflects his commitment to helping distinct artistic lineages develop ambitious work with care.
His impact is both visible and behind the scenes: the eye of a director, the knowledge of a performer, and the practical imagination of a maker—helping Austin artists develop the confidence, structure, and creative language that allow work to endure.
Following his 2012 experience, Anthony Cowan became Navaji’s close friend and mentor in Pranic Healing. Through Anthony, he entered a lineage associated with Master Choa Kok Sui and learned to pair intuitive perception with repeatable protocols.
As a practitioner of Pranic Healing and Karmic Yoga, Navaji offers a structured, no-touch practice supporting energetic balance, emotional and physical well-being, space clearing, transitional care, and spiritual development. His approach is compassionate and methodical, grounded in the belief that healing can restore a person’s relationship with their inner life.
For Navaji, healing and art are not separate careers. Both require sensitivity, presence, ethical intention, and attention to what is not immediately visible. That shared discipline informs his paintings, private practice, ATMA Moves, and KOMOREBI. Pranic Healing is complementary spiritual wellness—not a replacement for medical or mental-health care.
A self-taught painter and photographer, Navaji developed his visual practice alongside his life in dance. By 2020–2021, he was creating a body of acrylic and mixed-media work that translated meditation, intuitive perception, mythology, and spiritual inquiry into layered form. Light-responsive paintings such as The Powers, RA, and Satori use UV-sensitive and phosphorescent pigments so a single work can reveal different visual states under natural light, ultraviolet light, and darkness. In 2021, he presented his work as a participating artist in Big Medium’s Austin Studio Tour.
His photography extends the same interest in inner identity through constructed portraiture and creative direction. Through the ongoing ATMA Artist series, he photographs subjects through archetypal, mythic, and spiritually charged visual identities, drawing on his experience with movement, painting, theatrical light, costume, and direction.
The 2012 experience directly inspired A Soul’s Life, an independently created and illustrated series through which children and adults can approach the idea of a soul entering human life with wonder rather than fear. Published in 2023, Book 1: The Soul carries the symbolic and cosmic visual language of his paintings into full-page digital illustration.
Whether directing a company, building a theatrical world, teaching a child, painting an inner vision, supporting a healing process, or writing a book, Navaji’s work is animated by one pursuit: creating conditions in which human potential can become visible.
On legacy“The brilliance of our legacy will be measured by the magnitude of our mental, emotional, and spiritual development.”