Upcoming Events
Rhythm & Gestures: An All Levels Bharatanatyam Workshop
Use bharatanatyam inspired technique, music, and narrative building to inform your creative process and find new ways to move! Class will include working with live music, how to bring subtext and story into movement, and looking at both rhythm and gesture from a creative lens. We teach a short phrase to unconventional music to help us dig deeper into all of these perspectives. Rohan Krishnamurthy will be joining us on percussion, and Roopa Mahadevan will be bringing her vocal stylings! We will be working with them to better understand and explore musicality through movement.
As You Are
As You Are is a dance-theater work centering the stories of women, particularly from South Asian diaspora communities. Blending movement, text, and sound, the piece offers an intimate look at survival, agency, healing, and sisterhood without demanding resolution or resilience.
Rooted in real narratives, it invites audiences to witness with compassion.
Produced by Shruti Abhishek Dance
Broken Seeds Still Grow - Presented by Mondavi Center
Mondavi Center presents, Broken Seeds Still Grow, a multi-disciplinary dance and visual art production created by Nava Dance Theater and Rupy C. Tut that explores the continuing impact of the 1947 British-India Partition, one of the most formative events in South Asia’s recent history.
Bharatanatyam Weekly Classes (Beginner)
Beginner Bharatanatyam Classes, every Saturday starting February 1st from 2:30 to 4 PM at Shawl Anderson.
Bharatanatyam Classes
Intermediate/Advanced Bharatanatyam classes every Monday from 7:30 to 9:30pm at Shawl Anderson Dance Center.
Nava Dance in NYC : A Bharatanatyam Workshop by Nadhi Thekkek
Nava Dance is coming to New York City, and we would love to meet you!
Join us for a 2 hour class with Nadhi Thekkek as she takes you through a typical Nava Dance company rehearsal. We will do a warm up, adavus, combos, and then learn some Nava repertoire from Rogue Gestures!
This is for anyone who has experience with any South Asian dance form, including any so called classical forms, Bollywood, or folk.
$30 Per Person
Space is limited, and will be first come first serve! Please fill out the following form, and pay through venmo: @nadhek
Virtual Screening of "Response to Tea Dance"
URP presents a special work in progress virtual screening of an excerpt of cohort member Sudesh Mantillake's film, Response to Tea Dance. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Sudesh and his collaborators. Register here to attend!
Unrehearsed Artist Residency 2025 Applications Now Open!
Applications for the Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program for 2025 are now open! Check out this link for more information.
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies presented by Kala Collective
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies is a bharatanatyam, experimental movement, and live music production that explores the labor and lived experiences of South Asian immigrant women in the United States.
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies - Presented by UMass Amherst
Nava Dance Theatre comes to UMass as part of the Fine Arts Center’s Reimagine Residencies program. The company will spend a week on campus in production and engaging with students. The residency culminates in a public performance and question-and-answer session.
URP Art Share
This year the showcase will feature workshops and live performances, with a reception at the end where we will screen performances from our artist based in India and Sri Lanka.
URP Art Share 2024 | Pritam Das, Dayita Nereyeth, Shwetha Gopalakrishnan
2024 URP Art Share featuring Pritam Das, Dayita Nereyeth, and Shwetha Gopalakrishnan
This is Work, Too - Presented by Matrusena
Presented by Matrusena as part of Interbeing, Nadhi Thekkek and Shruti Abishek will be performing “This is Work, Too,” an loose excerpt from the production “Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies.”
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies - Livermore
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies will be in Livermore in 2024! Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies is an ensemble work of 7 dancers with a live original score by Roopa Mahadevan, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, and others. Rogue Gestures were created and produced by Nava Dance Theatre
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies - Annapolis
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies will be in Annapolis in 2024! Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies is an ensemble work of 7 dancers with a live original score by Roopa Mahadevan, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, and others. Rogue Gestures were created and produced by Nava Dance Theatre
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies - Northglenn
Rogue Gestures is an ensemble work of 7 dancers with a live original score by Roopa Mahadevan, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, and others. Rogue Gestures were created and produced by Nava Dance Theatre.
URP Art Share 2023 | Day 2 | SNJV, Aravind, Anand, Sruthi
Day 2 of the 2023 URP Art Share featuring SNJV, Aravind Divakaran, Anand Dhanakoti, Sruthi Natanakumar
URP Art Share 2023 | Day 1 | Carlito, Laksha, Arpita, Sangram
Day 1 of the 2023 URP Art Share featuring Carlito Catalano, Laksha Dantran, Aprita Gaidhane, and Sangram Mukhopadhyay
Nava Dance in NYC : A Bharatanatyam Workshop by Nadhi Thekkek
Nava Dance is coming to New York City, and we would love to meet you!
Join us for a 2 hour class with Nadhi Thekkek as she takes you through a typical Nava Dance company rehearsal. We will do a warm up, adavus, combos, and then learn some Nava repertoire from Rogue Gestures!
This is for anyone who has experience with any South Asian dance form, including any so called classical forms, Bollywood, or folk.
$35 Per Person
Space is limited, and will be first come first serve! Please fill out the following form, and pay through venmo: @nadhek
Find your Narrative: A workshop by Sreelakshmy Govardhanan
Nava Dance Theatre is excited to host Shreelakshmy Govardhanan in the Bay Area for “Find your Narrative.”
First Look: Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies
Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies is an ensemble work of 7 dancers with a live original score by Roopa Mahadevan, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, and others. This work premieres Dec. 9 - 11 at ODC Theater. Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies were created and produced by Nava Dance Theatre.
2023 Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program: APPLY NOW
The Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program aims to fund and support the creation of new dance work by artists who are often not represented in conventionally-funded spaces in the South Asian Dance industry. The program keeps care & developmental support front and center while working toward sharing a Final Work in Progress.
Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program: ART SHARE 2022
The Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program aims to fund and support the creation of new dance work by artists who are often not represented in conventionally-funded spaces in the South Asian Dance industry. The program keeps care & developmental support front and center while working toward sharing a Final Work in Progress.
How to Rewrite Our Stories: A Discussion & Workshop for Dance Makers
Are you creating new work inspired by mythology? Or current events? Contemporary history? In this discussion and workshop, Mimi Mondal, Hugo and Nebula award nominated short story writer, will describe how she uses imagination and fiction to show her point of view in story telling. She will discuss with Unrehearsed resident Asha Rowland and share reflections on various projects from her experience writing fictional short stories, exploring authors who have inspired her, and working with dance. Join us as we discover the many paths toward imagining and reimagining stories, through conversation and even trying ourselves.
Curated by Preethi Ramaprasad
Broken Seeds Still Grow
Exploring our shared struggle with displacement through dance and visual art
Created by Nadhi Thekkek and Rupy C. Tut, Broken Seeds Still Grow is a dance and visual art production inspired by the real-life stories from the 1947 Partition Archive and recent South Asian American history. This creative inquiry sources poetry, eyewitness accounts, and current events to understand the current political climate while reflecting on what it means to belong somewhere. This work includes original music by GS Rajan.
The show is titled “Broken Seeds Still Grow” as a tribute to stories of ancestors who have faced displacement either through Partition or immigration but continued to be resilient and grow wherever they found home. These stories of displacement are crucial to preserve, understand, and share; they give us a glimpse into our individual pasts, while helping us understand our collective future.
This creation of this work was supported by the East Bay Fund for Artists through the East Bay Community Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Dancers' Group CA$H Grants, and crowd funders. This project is fiscally-sponsored by CounterPulse.
For more info and our press kit, visit Broken Seeds.
Migrations
Migrations – Nava Dance Theatre (In-Person)
Sunday, August 21, 2022 4pm – 5pm PDT
Nava Dance Theatre, currently under the direction of Dr. Nadhi Thekkek, is a bharatanatyam dance company based in San Francisco, California, which uses the south Indian dance form as a medium for artistic reflection and discovery. Moreover, the founders of Nava believe that bharatanatyam, while culturally-specific, is a modern medium that can be used to discover and understand both historic and contemporary themes.
In Migrations, Nava Dance Theatre examines homeland through personal accounts of South Asian migration stories. Inspired by the lived experience of South Asians who migrated to the US since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, Nadhi and her collaborators ask if it is possible to fully separate ourselves from what we remember as home, or if that is what we want in the first place. The work questions the cost of the so-called American Dream at a time when stability feels further than ever.
Presented by IDIA: I Dance Hence I Am, a dance festival created by by Ganesh Vasudeva and Kavita Thirumalai.