Nadhi Thekkek
Artistic Director | Choreographer | Co-Founder
As an Artistic Director of the company since 2012, Nadhi’s work through Nava has been supported by CounterPulse Performing Diaspora, CA$H Grants, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Dancers' Group, East Bay Community Fund and others. Her recent freelance work include performances and collaborations with Randee Paufve (Oakland), Seeta Patel (London), Graham Lustig (Oakland) and Sujit Vaidya (Vancouver.). Nadhi received her foundational training from Guru Smt. Sundara Swaminathan at Kala Vandana Dance Company in San Jose. In 2006, she had the opportunity to join Nritya School of Dance in Houston, under Guru Smt. Padmini Chari. In 2012, she started training under Guru Sri. A. Lakshmanaswamy (Nrityalakshana, Chennai.) She returns to Chennai each year to perform in the Annual Music and Dance Festival.
Shruti Abhishek
Company Dancer | Manager | Rehearsal Director
Shruti is a Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher. She is the founder and artistic director of Kshetram - a holistic dance institution based in Pleasanton and Livermore, California. Shruti has a bachelor's degree in Performing Arts from Nalanda Nritya Kala Mahavidyalaya, Mumbai, India. She trains with Guru Shri Vaibhav Arekar in Mumbai, India. Her formative years were spent learning dance with Guru Smt. Rohini M Singhi in Mumbai. Shruti had the opportunity to perform at several prestigious festivals in India and Europe with Vaibhav Arekar’s Sankhya Dance Company and in the US with Nava Dance Theatre. While working on other creative collaborations, Shruti co-curates two festivals: ‘Varnam Salon’ which is a series of performances by California-based artists and ‘When Eyes Speak’ the first Indian choreography festival in San Francisco. Shruti has been a part of Nava Dance Theatre since 2016.
Lalli Venkat
Company Dancer
Lalli has studied bharatanatyam under Smt. Jayanthi Sridhar, disciple of Guru Adyar K. Lakshman. She has performed at various venues across the U.S. She has been performing with Nava Dance since 2016.
Amith K | Kerala, India | 2022 Cohort
Amith K is a PhD scholar in the department of Malayalam at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady. He is learning Mohiniyattam under Guru Nirmala Paniker at Natanakairali situated at Irinjalakuda in Thrissur. His areas of interest are political philosophy, poetry and dance studies. He completed his Post Graduation in Malayalam from Sree Sankaracharya University and MPhil degree from Madras University.
Photo credits: Azad
Anjali Mehta | New York City, USA | 2022 Cohort
Anjali Mehta, an NYC-based lawyer and dancer, strives to create movement(s), through dance and activism. She has been dancing since she was 5, training in Bharatanatyam, jazz, modern, musical theater, and martial arts. She is the Artistic Director of the Artivist's Studio and the director of “Descent”, an official selection at the Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase, the Jacksonville Dance-Film Festival, and the Experimental, Dance & Music Film Festival. Anjali was also nominated for Outstanding Performer at the 2021 Bessie Awards.
More info on www.anjalimehta.info
Photo credits: Raashi Desai
Asha Rowland | Minneapolis, USA | 2022 Cohort
Asha Rowland is a multi-faceted artist in several idioms of dance with a strong focus in Bharatanatyam and continuous training in MEHNAT dance forms, Fusion Dance, Afro Fusion, Hip Hop, and Contemporary. She is a disciple of Smt. Hema Rajagopalan and Smt. Krithika Rajagopalan and a company member of Natya Dance Theatre. Asha is also an ensemble member in Lakshmi Rampopal's, Lykanthea, as a dancer and vocalist. With her multi-cultural background, Asha aspires for audiences to see the world through a different lens, experience connection, and continue cultivating empathy through her artistry.
More info on www.asharowland.com
Photo credits: Carrie Meyer
Bhumi Patel | Oakland, USA | 2022 Cohort
Bhumi B Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist, dance scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi was a 2017-2018 Lead Artist with SAFEhouse Arts, a 2017-2018 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellow and a 2019 Women of Color in the Arts Leadership through Mentorship Fellow.
More info on pateldanceworks.org
Photo credits: Shinichi Iova-Koga
Cauveri Suresh | Oakland, USA | 2022 Cohort
Cauveri Suresh is an artist whose work orients around lineage, improvisation, color, and relation to physical environment. They are influenced by study with teachers including Jodi Melnick, Christina Robson, and Joanna Kotze, as well as from performing with Leah Samuels, Lauren Simpson Dance, Kickbal, and GERALDCASELDANCE. As a facilitator, they are grounded in accessing embodied and ancestral knowledge of power and accountability through conflict resolution methods practiced for centuries by the global majority. Cauveri is also a painter and gardener, and graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 2018 with a B.A. in dance.
Photo credits: Robbie Sweeny
Charumathi Chandrasekar | Tamil Nadu, India | 2022 Cohort
Charumathi Chandrasekar, a bharatanatyam artist, is the 9th direct descendent of Tanjavur Quartet. She is the daughter and disciple of Thanjavur K. P. K. Chandrasekaran and granddaughter of Isai Perarignar Thanjavur K. P. Kittappapillai. Charu completed her MBA from Thanjavur Sastra University and is currently pursuing her masters in bharatanatyam from Annamalai University. She received the Kalai Ilamani Award from the Government of Tamilnadu in 2018 and Swami Vivekanandar Award in 2017 for academics and dance.
Photo credits: Naveen Photography
Diya Naidu | Bengaluru, India | 2022 Cohort
Diya Naidu is an independent choreographer and dancer based in south India. Her primary practices are rooted in movement with contemporary dance, yoga, kalaripayattu and partner work being some of her biggest influences. Her work often involves embodied research over several years both with performers and community members via workshops. Some of these themes have been intimacy and touch, patriarchal penetration and more recently longing. She has worked with Attakkalari, Cie Gilles Jobin, Company Theatre - Mumbai, Chris Leuenberger productions and East Africa soul train among many organizations.
More info on www.diyanaidu.com
Photo credits: Divesh Idnani
Shamitha Ruchiran Hettige | Sri Lanka | 2022 Cohort
Shamitha Ruchiran Hettige is an established Kandyan and contemporary dancer, performer & teacher trained under the legendary dancers Channa Wijewardana and Upuli Panibharatha. Shamitha has been lauded for his flawless & geometrically fine jumps rooting from Kandyan and other traditional dance forms of Srilanka and has represented the country in more than 60 countries. He is also the founder of Playmore, Srilanka’s and India’s first trampoline based fitness studio. Shamitha is currently learning Srilankan traditional drums, Mayurbhanj Chhau, Kalaripayattu and exploring pedagogies of other traditional arts forms of South Asia.
Photo credits: Sagara Lakmal De Mel
Talin Subbaraya | Bengaluru, India | 2022 Cohort
Talin Subbaraya grapples with movement, theatre and writing. He was a part of G5A Foundation and Soho Theatre's collaborative script writing program,"Writer's Lab Mumbai". He was also a resident artist at Smarter Digital Realities, a residency curated by Padmini Ray Murray and produced by Sandbox Collective and Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore. He started learning Bharatanatyam from Priyamvada Murali and currently explores the form with Priyanka Chandrasekhar in Bangalore. Talin's current practice of the arts is an attempt to find ways to tell stories from his personal lens, thus leading to experiments with the forms he practices. He is also exploring art facilitation with children.
Photo credits: Armaan Mishra
Thilagavathi Palani | Tamil Nadu, India | 2022 Cohort
Thilagavathi Palani is the first-ever female performer of the traditional art form Kattaikkuttu, an all-night form of Tamil theatre that had predominantly male performers for years. Trained under Perungattur Rajagopalan at the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, she is the first woman to found her own Koothu company and also the first Kattaikkuttu artist to receive the national award, Sangeet Natak Akademi Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. Having performed in countries like France, UK, Malaysia and Netherlands, she works to help many marginalized communities in her area with food, health care and access to education and continues to create performances for social justice. Till date she has performed over 2000 all night Kattaikkuttu performances and runs the Katradi after-school program for empathy based social transformation. Since then she has broken many stereotypes in her personal and professional life
Nadhi Thekkek | Chair
Nadhi Thekkek is the Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre (NDT), a bharatanatyam dance company based in San Francisco, California. She operates on the belief that bharatanatyam, while culturally-specific, is a modern medium with potential to push boundaries of how we can use culturally-specific art forms to understand place, identity, and politics.
Her choreography has been supported through: National Endowment for the Arts, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Dancers’ Group, California Arts Council, CounterPulse, East Bay Community Foundation and others.
Some of Nadhi’s artist initiatives through Nava Dance Theatre include the Dansplain Series, a festival showcasing bharatanatyam work inspired by social justice issues and the Varnam Salon, a dance series highlighting traditional arts repertoire co-created by her, Shruti Abhishek, and Preethi Ramaprasad. She and Tanu Sreedharan created Unrehearsed Activism, where NDT produces video art and public events engaging the South Asian community in urgent social justice issues. She is also on the board of directors of the Western Arts Alliance, and one of the co-chairs of the new WAA Hyphen + Asian affinity group.
Nadhi Thekkek learned from Guru Smt. Sundara Swaminathan (Kala Vandana Dance Company, San Jose, CA) and Guru Smt. Padmini Chari (Nritya School of Dance, Houston, TX). Since 2012, she has continued training under Guru Sri. A. Lakshmanaswamy (Chennai, India).
Yashoda Thakore | 2022 Collaborator
Yashoda Thakore descends from a long line of Kalavantalu dancers (hereditary women singer / dancer families). She is a renowned performer of Kuchipudi and Devadasi Nrityam. She has a PhD for her research on the Interrelationship Between Yoga and Indian Classical Dances and authored “Kaivalya-Joy in Yoga and Dance” (2014), co-translated and critically edited “Nritta Ratnavali”, a 13thC text. She was an artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania (2019), and performed at the Wesleyan University (2019). Yashoda is a Chair for Kuchipudi Department at The University of Silicon Andhra, California. She was conferred the Bangalore Nagaratnamma award (2017) by the Samskruti Organisation, Guntur and the Ugadi Puraskaram by the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
Yashoda works relentlessly to recover the voices and dances of the Kalavantalu women and to bring the next generation of artists from her community back to singing and dancing, Her main goal is to increase awareness and pride in these art forms.
Priya Srinivasan | 2022 Collaborator
Priya Srinivasan is a performer/scholar who lives and works in the lands of the Boonwurrung people in Melbourne Australia, combining theory and practice to work towards social justice issues through art. She is the co-Artistic Director of the highly successful Sangam: Performing Arts Platform and Festival of Diaspora supported by The Victorian Government and in partnership with MAV, Abbotsford Convent, Drum Theatre, Bunjil Place and Dancehouse enabling a single platform for classical, contemporary and experimental forms. Her own performances prioritize feminist decolonization processes making visible minority women's histories. Her experimental, postcolonial site-specific work rooted in South Asian classical dance practice has been presented in major festivals and venues such as universities, museums, galleries, and theatres internationally in USA, Europe, China, India and Australia. With a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, Priya is the author of the award winning book “Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labour” and was a tenured Associate Professor at UCR. Her intercultural collaborative work with First Nations artists “Serpent Dreaming Women” and “Churning Waters” toured India for Australia Fest. She has curated and choreographed several solo, duet, and large scale projects at Hermitage Museum Amsterdam (with the Moving Matters Collective), Berlin Wall Memorial, Rockbund Art Museum Shanghai, Dakshina Chitra and Spaces Chennai, Adishakti Puducherry, Highways Los Angeles, DCA Darwin, MAV, Bunjil Place, Drum Theatre, Abbotsford Convent, and Dancehouse. Currently she is working on a large scale experimental, anti-violence feminist dance/theatre project with the Keerthana Carnatic Women’s Choir “The Chronicles of Durga” at Artshouse.
Joti Singh | 2022 Collaborator
Joti Singh is a dance creator and innovator, sprung from the U.S. American south to parents from northern India. She is the Co- Artistic Director of Duniya Dance and Drum Company. Joti began her dance training in Punjabi circles, carrying through her body the culture that’s in her blood and memory. As an adult, West African dance entered Joti’s purview, transforming her body’s imagination. Through this multilingual body, Joti explores where history intertwines with contemporary continuities of celebration and injustice. She created the performance “Half and Halves,” about the Punjabi-Mexican communities of California with collaborator Zenon Barron. She also choreographed for Michael Franti's "Once A Day" video. Joti has received support from the Creative Work Fund, the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, and more. Currently, Joti is creating the piece “Ghadar Geet: Blood and Ink,” about her great grandfather, Bhagwan Singh Gyanee's role in the Ghadar Party, based in San Francisco in the early 20th century, fighting for India’s independence from Britain.Joti and her partner, musician Bongo Sidibe, lead bi-annual trips to Guinea and in 2012, opened the Duniya Center for Arts and Education in Conakry. She teaches Bhangra all over the SF Bay Area, including at Dance Mission Theater. Joti founded the World Dance program at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2016. She holds an MA in South Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and a BA in English from Reed College.
www.duniyadance.com.
Preethi Ramaprasad | 2022 Collaborator
Preethi Ramaprasad is a multidisciplinary dancer and musician who is passionate about the significant role that the arts can have in education, culture, and politics. She has toured and taught dance in India, Europe, and the U.S. A disciple of Professor Sudharani Raghupathy in Bharatanatyam, she is committed to the Indian arts globally in scholarship and performance. Ramaprasad is co-curator of San Francisco’s first Indian choreography festival, When Eyes Speak (a “Critic’s Pick” in the San Francisco Chronicle) and the Varnam Salon, both aiming to amplify the multiplicity of voices in Indian dance. Currently, Ramaprasad is a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant in Critical Dance Studies at University of California, Riverside.
Priyanka Raghuraman
Company Dancer
Priyanka Raghuraman is a senior performer & faculty member of Anitha Guha's Bharathanjali and a company dancer at Nava Dance Theatre, SF. She currently teaches in the Bay Area - USA through her teaching practice 'Priyada Arts'. She started learning Bharatanatyam from her mother, Smt. Kamala Raghuraman at the age of 4 and later came under the tutelage of Guru Kalaimamani Smt. Anitha Guha. As a professional soloist and graded artist with Doordarshan(India), she has toured and performed at prestigious venues across the country, the USA, and Singapore.
Aishwarya Subramanian
Company Dancer
Aishwarya is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Bay Area. Having trained in Bharatanatyam at the Jayamangala School of Music and Dance under her mother-guru Shobha Subramanian, she has participated in dance workshops with gurus, such as Maneesha Sathe, Narendra and Anusha Kumar, The Dhananjayans, Priyadarshini Govind, Late M.V. Narasimhachari, The Kirans, M. Venkata Krishnan, Divya Nayar, and N. Srikanth. As Artistic Director of Jayamangala, she has taught, performed, and presented Bharatanatyam at various events, festivals, and conferences around the world. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Aishwarya is a practicing expressive arts therapist and has been with Nava Dance Theatre since 2018.
Shelley Garg
Company Dancer
Shelley studied at the Shakti School of Bharata Natyam under Smt. Viji Prakash and performed her dance debut in 2010. She has performed across the country with Shakti Dance Company and has been dancing with Nava Dance Theatre since 2018.
Sanjana Melkote
Company Dancer
Sanjana has been learning Bharatanatyam for the last 15 years from her guru Smt. Suganda Iyer and continues to learn at the Upadhye School of Dance. She is a dancer at Nava Dance Theater and senior captain for her nationally ranked collegiate Bharatanatyam team, Natya at Berkeley. She is passionate about choreography and co-founded Fuchsia Dance, a platform for dancers to collaborate, innovate, and share Bharatanatyam with broader audiences. She is a fourth year student studying Computer Science and Journalism at UC Berkeley and also learns Carnatic Vocal from Smt. Jayashree Varadarajan.
Janani Muthaiya
Company Dancer
Janani began her Bharatanatyam tutelage with Guru Viji Prakash and the Shakti School of Bharatanatyam at the age of 11 and has performed with the Shakti Dance Company in many events and festivals around the world. She’s also choreographed group performances for various venues including the Davis Dheem Tana Showcase and the Festival of Chariots. She joined Nava Dance Theatre in 2019.
Anand Dhanakoti | Hamburg, Germany
Anand Dhanakoti was born in Bangalore, India and currently works as a freelance dancer based in Hamburg. He graduated from CDSH-Contemporary Dance School Hamburg in June 2021. From 2006 to 2012 he stayed at the NGO "Born Free Art School", where he got educated in the arts. From 2007 to 2017, he trained in classical ballet and jazz with Yana Lewis, of the Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet in Bangalore. From 2009 to 2018, he was trained in Indian martial arts and yoga at Kalari Gurukulam. He also represented the state of Karnataka in the national gymnastics competitions in India. He has worked with various choreographers like Matej Kejzar, Abhilash Ningappa, Jonny Lloyd, Suse Tietjen, and Ursina Tossi. He has also choreographed several pieces, including Thuli, which was performed at the Bremen Theatre; Immer, a solo that he performed at the Gdanski Festival Tanca in Poland; Kintsugi, a duet in collaboration with Asha Ponikiewska, which we performed at the A FoCoCo III Festival in Bangalore, India, and Japan; and a piece for the Rangayana Theatre Group, which was shown at various festivals that dealt with farmers' suicide. He worked with Adam Linder as an assistant choreographer, did a two-month internship with Unusual Symptoms, the dance company of the Theater Bremen, and worked for three months with David Zambrano. He gave workshops and taught art and dance in NGOs, slums, and indigenous Indian areas, Japan, Bangladesh, Germany, and Belgium. He represented India four times at the Nonviolent Communication Conferences in Germany and at the Peace Conference in Japan. He has a BA degree in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology from St. Joseph's College, Bangalore. He is an Inlaks scholar and an Eurasia dancer.
Aravind Divakaran | Kottayam, India
Divakaran Aravind is a professional body kinetic artist from Kerala, who has undergone Kalaripayattu and Yoga training since the age of 16 from some of the greatest Gurukkals of India Mr EP Vasudevan Gurukkal, Dr. EP Shaji Vasudevan Gurukkal, and Valappil Karunan Gurukkal.
Arpita Gaidhane | Bangalore, India
I am an artist, facilitator and social change-maker from Bangalore, India. I cultivate safe spaces for people to come together with shared values, guidelines and agreements. I offer embodiment support for people undergoing grief, trauma or confusion. I also offer Art Ceremony to support people to sublimate their emotions through Art.
As a child, I studied bharatanatyam, and as adult I trained with Parvathy Baul for a number of years in Baul. I also had the pleasure to learn from other Baul Masters - Kanai Das Baul, Deb Das Baul, Lakshman Das Baul, Mansoor Fakir and others.
My performance, 'Why I am a feminist', interweaving movements with narratives of female ancestors who underwent child widowhood, divorce, dowry death, domestic abuse and repression on the professional front was presented at InterPlayce, Oakland and Sumana Sangama, Dharwad in 2014.
I have deepened my practice of engaging with movement for body wisdom and healing through immersions with Belly Dance, Interplay, the Resilience Toolkit, Center for Mind-Body Medicine, A Course on the Imaginal and Pranic Healing. This is enhanced by my facilitation experience and training with YES! Jams, the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, the Changemakers Lab at World Pulse and Starling Collective by Giving Tuesday. I have also received a lot of support and wisdom through Peer Support Space, Florida and therapy with Continuum Practices, CBT, Internal Family systems and other somatic and art based modalities.
Carlito Catalano | Nassau, Bahamas
Carlito Catalano is an Odissi dancer from The Bahamas. He began learning as a teenager by watching videos of various dancers on the internet. After attending a workshop in Atlanta with Bijayini Satpathy in 2019, he began attending virtual classes with Satpathy when she offered online classes in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Carlito holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and also enjoys baking and music.
Laksha Dantran | San Francisco, USA
Laksha Dantran is an Indian classical Dance artist with an experience of over 30 years. She is a trans woman and formerly was known by the name PR Rajesh.
Rajesh used to be very passionate about her self-taught dancing to movie songs, drawing, and making small handicraft items which won a lot of attention and appreciation and even merit certificates. At the age of 13, her father’s encouragement led her to join Smt. Kalamandalam Sumathy who was her first guru for Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam, Kuchipudi, and folk dance.
After completing her Pre-Degree, Rajesh joined Kalakshetra Foundation College of Fine Arts to learn Bharatanatyam as the main and Carnatic Vocal as the subsidiary. After graduation, Rajesh then served in the concert section as a guest artist for 2 years and as a teacher for 5 years in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra Foundation.
Rajesh also attended professional training sessions under the two Kuchipudi exponents Smt.Sathyapriya Ramana and Smt.Sheela Unnikrishnan in Kuchipudi dance performance.
Being in the midst of various challenges after converting to Lakshya from Rajesh in 2008, she never collapsed, instead she kept trying to be active in her dance art through teaching Bharatanatyam, performing, organizing, and producing original theater productions such as “AIDS”, En Kadhalan, Five Elements, etc to feature LGBTQ perspectives.
She worked on her own under the self-created banner ""Lakshya Performing Arts"" with a focus on emboldening her female soul trapped in a transgender identity, and her strength and beauty as a woman. She wanted to move audiences into action—to find the humanity and essential value of communities of all abilities and experiences.
When she looks back, even though her own deep roots in Indian classical dance, theater, and visual arts she had in her Kalakshetra life became challenging to her own existence, as an artist of gender, Laksha has been strengthening her artistic skills so far as a performer and choreographer in Chicago based organizations such as Mandala South Asian Performing Arts group, She Wolf Sacred Movement, Mandi Theater, Pivot Arts, Trikone Chicago, Thribhang and so on.
As a winner of two prestigious awards 3Arts for performing arts, and the Spark micro-grant award for visual arts, currently Laksha is an emerging trans artist in the Bay Area. She feels that her visual art skills and performing art skills are the two eyes that lit her way as a transwoman artist upholding gender neutrality in art."
Sruthi Natanakumar | Mumbai, India
Sruthi Natanakumar hails from a family of Natyacharyas (Nattuvanars) of the Thanjavur parampara and is the eighth-generation descendant of the lineage of Harivenkatakrishna Nattuvanar of Thanjavur. At four, her tiny steps were set to rhythm by her Grand-father and Guru Natya Kalanidhi K. Kalyanasundaram of Sri Rajarajeswari Bharatha Natya Kala Mandir, Mumbai (Est.1945). Sruthi has performed, both, solo and as a part of the Rajarajeswari dance troupe in thematic presentations and the traditional bharathanatyam maargam at major dance festivals like the Natyanjali, Natyarangam, Temple Festivals and the Chennai Music & Dance Season.
Sruthi has natural artistic abilities, and she pursues carnatic vocal and veenai besides learning and performing bharathanatyam. A very bright student of Sanskrit, Indian history and culture, she is a Ph.D student at the Cell for Indian Science and Technology in Sanksrit, I.I.T. Bombay.
Sruthi’s energy, agility and long association with dance makes her a dancer to watch out for."
SNJV | Hayward, USA
Pronunciation // sun-jeev
Pronouns // all
SNJV is an artist using dance, drag, and drama to showcase humanity by infusing culture into dance and fashion in performances for stage and film. SNJV started performing at 4 years old and has not stopped. SNJV holds the title of Mr. GAPA and is the first South-Asian title holder in GAPA’s history. (GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance). In addition, he is the co-founder of Parivar-a social collective to support and celebrate queer, trans, gender non-conforming folks connected to the South Asian diaspora. He is an educator who lectures about his research on drag, dance, and identity in university and corporate spaces. While SNJV loves being in front of the camera, he enjoys stepping behind the lens to produce and direct films drawing on culture, queerness, and texture.
Snjv.co
Sangram Mukhopadhyay | Kolkata, India
I am an independent and emerging dancer/movement practitioner. Coming from a background of non-institutional methodology of experiential learning, Waacking/Whacking(a 70s Los Angeles Gay club style) comes closest to describing the movement vocabulary I use. This is to navigate the intersection of gender and contemporary life. This ability to contextualize the form as per my socio-political location has allowed me to take it to the proscenium in the capacity of a performer and choreographer.
Aarthi Ramesh
Company Dancer
Aarthi began learning bharatnatyam in Muscat with Smt. Padmini Krishnamurthy and did her arangetram with Smt. Revathi Ramachandran when she moved to India. She continued to learn and perform in productions with Smt. Srekala Bharath while in India and with Smt. Hema Rajagopalan after moving to US. She joined Nava in 2023.
Abirami Murugappan
Company Dancer
Abirami Murugappan has been learning at the Sankalpa School of Dance under Nirupama Vaidyanathan since the age of 5, and performed her arangetram in 2012. Since then, she’s been part of several Sankalpa productions. She was also part of Natya at UC Berkeley, a collegiate Bharathanatyam team, had the chance to compete nationally with them.
Tanu Sreedharan
Program Director
Tanu Sreedharan is a Bharatanatyam dancer and public health professional. She is passionate about creating more equitable communities and influencing policy through data analytics. Tanu's primary passion is Bharatanatyam. She began her tutelage under gurus K.P. and Katherine Kunhiraman and continued her study of Bharatanatyam under K.P. Yesodha. She is a dedicated public health leader and passionate Bharatanatyam dancer that looks forward to contributing to the field using her cultural wealth and desire for change.
Shireen Hamza | Chicago
Shireen Hamza is a historian and artist living with chronic illness in Chicago. She teaches with a community prison education project (PNAP) and participates in the disability dance and contact improvisation communities there. She completed her PhD in Harvard's History of Science department and continues her research on the history of science and medicine in the medieval Islamic world through a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. Through her practices in movement and sound, Shireen brings embodied research methods to bear on her historical work.
Meghana Ravikumar | Oakland
"Meghana Ravikumar (she/her) is a multimedia artist, machine learning product manager, early venture advisor and climate activist based in the SF Bay Area. Her movement practice honors and interweaves various dance lineages of Contemporary, Bharatanatyam, and Bollywood, with joy, power, and play. Meghana’s artwork as a whole is inspired by her Indian-American experience in the United States and her search for home. Through a mix of memoirs, short stories, dance and film, she focuses on unraveling and understanding her journey and using story-telling as a form of activism. To say, I am here, we are here, and we matter. Her work has been showcased at Shawl Anderson and Kearny Street Workshop's APAture.
Dayita Nereyeth | Bangalore
Dayita Nereyeth is a co-founder of 206 Dance Collective and an Alexander Technique teacher based in Bangalore, India. She creates by pulling from practical realities of the self, exploring the mundane and pedestrian as performative, and contemporising classical forms. Dayita has a BA in Dance and Psychology from Mount Holyoke College (USA). She has performed in India, the USA, and Switzerland, and presented her choreography in India and online.
Shwetha Gopalakrishnan | New Delhi
Shwetha is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and researcher whose work blends together practices across fields of dance, theatre and research through a psycho-social lens. In 2019, she co-founded an online platform called "Nritically Yours" which looks at Bharathanatyam from a critical lens of gender and caste. Shwetha has performed solo and group dance productions both across India and abroad, as a part of the Abhinayaa Centre for Dance. She has a diploma in Bharathanatyam from Kalaikaveri College of fine arts. Shwetha has a Bachelors from Lady Shri Ram College for Women and a masters in Sociology from Ambedkar University. She also has worked as a Mitigation associate understanding the and documenting the life histories of death row prisoners at Project 39a, National Law University Delhi. Her recent freelance work includes acting and dramaturgy in plays in Delhi.
Parijat Desai | New York
Parijat Desai is an award-winning dance artist/educator based on unceded Lenape lands, or New York City. She creates hybrid performance blending contemporary dance, Gujarati circle dance and ritual, Indian folk and classical dance, martial arts, and experimental theater with Parijata Performance Projects. In 2023, she choreographed and produced Gujarati music for off-Broadway play, Elyria, and was a Visiting Artist at Bennington College, where she began developing O Ghostly Ancestor.
As an educator, Parijat facilitates participatory-dance experiences through Dance In The Round, based on her ancestral circle-dance traditions garba/raas, to support community engagement, activation, and well-being. Parijat also teaches contemporary dance/composition, and offers creative visioning workshops based on the Tamalpa LifeArt Process®. Her chapter in Music and Dance of Everyday South Asia (Oxford UP), “Dance In The Round: Embodying Inclusivity and Interdependence through Garba” is forthcoming in 2024.
Maya Rau-Murthy | Sunnyvale
Maya is a Bharatanatyam dancer, Konnakol artist, rapper, mridangist, educator, and co-director of Natya Anubhava. She has composed, choreographed, performed for solo and collaborative productions widely nationally and internationally including in Seva Sadan, National Gallery of Art, United Nations, Drive East, SafeHouseArts, NYC Hall, Jewish Museum, Hammond Museum, Javits Center, Smith Center, Stanford. She has directed productions ranging from traditional “Tales of Hanuman” to contemporary themes exploring social justice “Ardhanareeshwara: Shattering the Construct of Gender”, “Anyatha Naasti: Dreams of the Other”, and “Janani: Ode to Mother Earth”. Her gurus are Dr. Nalini Rau (Bharatanatyam), Balaskandan (Mridangam), Ashwini Srivatsan (Karnas), Rakesh SaiBabu (Chhau).
Pritam Das | New Delhi
Pritam Das defines passion for dance through his immense dedication and effortless grace as a Bharatanatyam dancer. Having undergone his initial training under Smt. Jayita Ghosh and Sri Samrat Dutta, he is now under the advanced tutelage of Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee Smt. Rama Vaidyanathan. Pritam has performed both solo and group works as part of his teacher’s ensemble in several prestigious festivals including Spirit of Youth, HCL Concert Series and Mid-Year Dance Festival 2022 by Music Academy, Uday Shankar Dance Festival, NCPA Mumbai’s Mudra Festival, Dhauli Kalinga Festival, Gudi Sambaraluu, Ustad Alauddin Khan Samaroh, Shivaargya Dance Festival and many more. He is an ‘A' grade artist of the Doordarshan, an empanelled artist in Spic Macay, and was also awarded the National Scholarship from the Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India for the field of Bharatanatyam in 2015-16. Pritam is the recipient of Gutty Vasu Memorial Prize from The Music Academy, Madras for being the Best Dancer in the 30 th Spirit of Youth Music and Dance Festival. He is also the recipient of M.N Subramanian Memorial Prize from the Music Academy, Madras for being the Best Dancer in the Mid-Year Dance Festival 2022. Undoubtedly recognized as a formidable talent in the field, Pritam is determined to scale greater heights and create meaningful art through his lifelong commitment to dance.
Sudesh Mantillake | Kandy, Sri Lanka
Sudesh Mantillake is passionate about the intersection of dance, philosophy, education, healing, and activism. Born and Raised in Sri Lanka, he received his BA from Sri Lanka, his MSc from Switzerland, and his PhD from the USA. He is trained in Kandyan dance of Sri Lanka and Kathak dance of India, theatrical clowning, and Tai Chi. Apart from Sri Lanka, he has presented his work in Greece, UAE, Switzerland, UK, Finland, USA, Canada, and India. Sudesh is a permanent faculty member at the Department of Fine Arts, the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and was the former Head of the Department.