Devyn Nekoda

Nekoda was born on December 12, 2000, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, to Doug Nekoda and Leslie McMullen. She has a younger brother named Kove. She started dancing before she could even speak properly. When she was two years old, she began taking lessons at Lisa Naves Dance Company, an institution she is still part of. There she became adept at a variety of dance forms, including ballet, jazz, contemporary, lyrical, tap, acrobatics, and hip-hop. She has also attended the Toronto School of Circus Acts, for whom she has performed on Breakfast TV.

In her short but impressive career so far, she has earned multiple accolades. She is the winner of the Miss Mini Terpsichore National Competition and Miss Mini Dancefest and was awarded the Triple Threat Convention Intermediate Threat accolade. She came fourth in the American Dance Awards National Competition and second in the Dance Canada National Competition. Nekoda currently resides in Toronto, Canada.

Nekoda is reportedly dating a fellow Canadian named Austin Giles, who has made some appearances on her social media profiles. Besides English, Nekoda is fluent in French.

Devyn Nekoda established herself as a dancer on stage before she even appeared in front of a camera. She performed alongside ‘Dancing with the Stars’ alumni Edyta Sliwinska in a production of ‘Dance Star’ at the Avalon Theater. She also went on a southern Ontario tour with Tree House's- Roll Play Live. She has appeared in the music video for Walk off the Earth’s 2013 song ‘Speeches’.

Nekoda made her acting debut in 2014, portraying a character named Luisa in ‘An American Girl: Isabelle Dances Into the Spotlight’. The eighth instalment in the American Girl film series, it tells the story of Isabelle Palmer (Erin Pitt), a nine-year-old gifted dancer who aspires to be a fashion designer someday. Nekoda’s Luisa is about the same age as Isabelle and her best friend. She is a modern dancer and very protective of Isabelle.

She made her small screen debut in ‘Max and Shred’, guest-starring in a season one episode as Wendy Chong. Her next role was in the widely popular Canadian mockumentary TV show ‘The Next Step’. She first appeared in a season two episode, playing one of the J-Troupe dancers and went on to reprise her role in an episode of season three.

Nekoda was cast as the recurring character Arlene Takahashi, a soft-spoken, geeky sophomore student at the Degrassi Community School in ‘Degrassi: The Next Generation,’ a teen drama that takes place in the Degrassi universe. From 2015 to 2016, she appeared in seven episodes of Amazon’s CGI/live action children's television series ‘Annedroids’. In 2016, she also did a television movie called ‘The Swap’ and guest-starred in Family Channel’s sitcom ‘Raising Expectations’. ‘The Swap’ is her first work for Disney. Its screenplay was adapted from a young adult novel of the same name by Megan Shull. In ‘Raising Expectations’, she got the chance to work with Jason Priestley, Molly Ringwald, and Luke Bilyk.

She was then chosen to appear in the series ‘Backstage.’