Program
What is Rogue Gestures? (Nadhi Thekkek)
Introduction (Shruti Abhishek)
Premiere #1: Passage
Passage Q & A
Nadhi Thekkek, Randee Paufve, Shruti Abhishek, Chris Evans, Conal Sathi
Moderated by Tanu Sreedharan
BREAK
Introduction to Interference (Nadhi Thekkek)
PREMIERE #2: Interference
interference Q & A
Nadhi Thekkek, Vertika Srivastava, Lalli Venkat, Ananya Ashok
Moderated by Tanu Sreedharan
Collaborators
Shruti Abhishek is a Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer 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.
Ananya Ashok is a Carnatic Vocalist currently training under Sangita Kalanidhi, Sri Madurai T.N. Seshagopalan. She received her formal and rigorous training from renowned violinist, Smt. Anuradha Sridhar, daughter and disciple of Lalgudi Srimathi Brahmanandam. Under the able guidance of her gurus, Ananya has performed in various major venues Chennai like Krishna Gana Sabha, Narada Gana Sabha, Kartik Fine Arts, The Madras Music Academy, and the prestigious Chembai Music Festival to name a few. Around India, she has performed in several venues throughout Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. Outside of India, she has performed in the United States, Singapore, and the UAE. She has given several Televised concerts on Tami and Kerala music channels such as DD Podhigai, Amritha TV, and Jaya TV.
Sergio Carrasco (videographer/editing) is a musician and videographer. A first generation Latin-American, his aim in both creative fields is to find the unity in culture and human experience. Creating Music for 15+ years and and Video for 7+ he found his primary passion in storytelling, be it via music or visually.
Chris Evans, an Oakland-based interdisciplinary artist trained in music and dance, works in and through performance broadly defined. Through collaborations with choreographers, dancers, musicians, visual artists, and poets she seeks to extend performance to encompass the space, audience, and artist. Her arts practice explores where the lines between dance, music, space, artist, and audience blur. She directs the Reconstruction Study project. Select projects include Ark of Bones, Reconstruction, Freedom Study, and Community Property. Select works include Yarns (Minority as Brand exhibit at Black and White Projects), Reconstruction Study #1A (Black Choreographers Summer Festival 2016, Red Poppy 2015), Fractures (ArtComplex pop-up exhibition 2014).
David Gaylord is a photographer, cinematographer, and designer. He studied photography and design at Pacific Lutheran University. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking at California State University Long Beach in 1987. He has multiple certificates in design. He has completed over 2000 pieces of creative work in the last 35 years and his art and photography is included in hundreds of collections throughout the world. Important themes David is interested in include: Mental health, patriarchy/sexism, racism, body image, abortion rights, environment, disabled justice, climate/energy, LGBT+ rights, immigration rights, income inequality, education, and homelessness.
Randee Paufve is the artistic director of Paufve Dance, a contemporary dance organization based on the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently returned from South India where she conducted dance research supported by a 2019-2020 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar Grant. She has been a featured artist on NPR’s All Things Considered, and was named in San Francisco Magazine’s 2018 “100 Artists Putting the East Bay On The Map.” She received the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Outstanding Individual Performance, the Della Davidson Prize for Innovations in Dance Theater, and a 2016 Theater Bay Area award nomination for her work with San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater. A two-time recipient of the E.E. Ford award for dance research in Europe, Randee’s choreography has also been supported by residencies at Ucross Foundation, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Red Cinder Creativity Center. From 2010-2020 Paufve Dance was Company-in-Residence at Berkeley’s Shawl-Anderson Dance Center.
Conal Sathi Data Alchemist by day and musician by night, Conal is an instrumentalist, composer, and singer, who loves fusing the different worlds of East and West together from Indian Classical to Jazz to Bollywood.
Vertika Srivastava began studying bharatanatyam under Prema Sondor and now trains under Viraja Mandhre and Shyamjith Kiran. She has performed around the country with different ensembles—including Nava Dance Theatre since 2014—and in San Francisco as a soloist/choreographer, most recently, at ODC PUSHFest and SafeHouse Arts.
Lalli Venkat Lalli Venkat 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.
Choreographer
Nadhi Thekkek is the Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre (NDT), a bharatanatyam dance company based in San Francisco, California (USA). 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.
Her production, “Broken Seeds Still Grow,” co-created and co-directed by Nadhi and visual artist Rupy C. Tut, was an exploration of their ancestry and an examination of cultural othering during the 1947 Partition of British India. Other recent works include “Unfiltered,” a bharatanatyam work exploring the #metoo movement co-created by Nadhi, Rasika Kumar and Sahasra Sambamoorthi; “Hamsa,” a bharatanatyam and ballet collaboration with Graham Lustig, Artistic Director of the Oakland Ballet; and “Passage” a bharatanatyam and modern dance exploration choreographed on Randee Paufve and Shruti Abhishek.
Some of Nadhi’s artist initiatives through Nava Dance Theatre include the Dansplain Series, a festival showcasing bharatanatyam work inspired by social justice issues; Locally Sourced at Navatman’s Drive East, a series of music and dance commissions featuring Bay Area-based artists; and the Varnam Salon, a dance series highlighting traditional arts repertoire. She recently created #endsouthasiansilence, where NDT produces video art and public events engaging the South Asian community in urgent social justice issues.
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).
Program Manager
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.