Jana grew up in Wodonga, and completed her schooling at the Victoria College of Arts Secondary School. She then went on to study at the New Zealand School of Dance, graduating in 2009, whilst working as a professional cheerleader for rugby team the Hurricanes.
Jana has worked with leading artists across dance, theatre and opera, and since 2010 has toured internationally with Shaun Parker and Company, Force Majeure, Dance Integrated Australia, Opera Australia, Nimby Opera, Projections Dance Company. Performing in prestigious dance venues including London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre and New York’s The Joyce Theatre, Jana has also been featured in music videos including The All Seeing Hand’s, Lying Dead with a Bar of Soap and Iva Lumkum’s Kung Fu Grip. Jana’s Aotearoa-based projects include performance credits Okareka Dance Company, Footnote NZ Dance Company’s ChoreoCo, The Conch, Kowhiti Festival, the World of Wearable Arts and was a motion capture stunt woman for Weta Workshop for ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the five Armies
At the beginning of 2017, Jana collaborated with Meryl Tankard developing her yet to be released film MAD and joined Australian Dance Theatre under Garry Stewart’s directorship where she performed National and International performances in New York, Europe, South America and Australia for Super Nature, Be Yourself, The Beginning of Nature, North/South and Tanja Liedtke’s construct.
Jana’s choreographic credits include a piece for the graduate season for the full-time dance program at The Space in Melbourne, and a solo work for Australian Dance Theatre’s Rough Draft season titled ‘Access’.
In 2018 Jana was awarded the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer for her role in construct. In 2019 Jana is a featured artist in the SBS documentary Perspective Shift about Australian artists living with disabilities.
