Day 1: Art Share 2026 Program

Renuka

Bay Area, California

Renuka is a fat queer Indian-American artist based in the Bay Area whose practice draws from Bharatanatyam, Bollywood, yoga, Bhangra, Guinean dance, modern techniques, and newer dance forms to explore liberation through vulnerability.
Her new work “Unraveling” reimagines Pandora’s myth following a woman shaped into a “model minority” whose perfect world cracks open, exposing grief, anger, joy, and solidarity.
Rooted in both personal story and political urgency, Renuka reflects on how “tradition” is too often used as a shield for misinformation or even Hindu supremacy. Instead, Renuka sees it as her responsibility to shed light on these issues and open space for challenging conversations, using choreography to reclaim tradition as a tool for connection, solidarity, and collective joy.

Pandurang

Maharastra-Goa, India

Pandurang Sagbhor is a contemporary dance artist from the Maharashtra-Goa region who found dance at 19 as rebellion against rigid systems. Trained in jazz, contemporary, and ballroom, his practice has been shaped through residencies across India where he explores body-space politics, gender, and social conditioning through the lens of power and inclusivity.

His work situates the body as both archive and battleground while challenging heteronormative structures and celebrating resilience, vulnerability, and joy. 🌟 Pandurang creates choreographies that blur the line between the personal and the political aiming to make performance a space of dialogue, belonging, and transformation.

RuAfza

New York City, New York

RuAfza is a performance artist working on a play that stages the tension of her trans immigrant showgirl experience - critiquing the very standards she’s compelled to embody. At a time when trans and immigrant lives are hyper-legislated and hyper-visible, she is uninterested in work that either “represents” marginalization or triumphs over it. Instead, her play inhabits the contradictions of survival, the exhaustion of endless performance, and the absurdity of navigating bureaucratic systems in bodies never meant to belong. She builds this world through dialogue, drag, club aesthetics, lighting, absurdism, Teenage Dream by Katy Perry, insurance companies, and Ozempic

Credits:
Music used : MJRH by Lifafa, Ozempic Track by Jaan-e-Haseena , California Girls by Jaan-e-Haseena and Kalani Perez
Cast for Elevator Sketch : Dhvani, Isaiah Flores, Mak Charade, Paridhi Chawla

Funders

Unrehearsed Artist Residency is created by Nava Dance Theatre, and is a part of the Unrehearsed Activism program, supported by the California Arts Council Impact Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, general operating grants, and individual donors. Consider donating to keep this program going! All donations are tax deductible in the US.

NAVA DANCE THEATRE IS A 501(C)3 REGISTERED NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION.

Special thanks

We would like to thank those who supported this work through community engagement programs, being present for work-in-progress sharings, having 1:1 conversations with many artists, and advising on the direction of this program. We would like to especially thank ALL the artists in this years URP cohort, for being so open to process over product and really digging deep into their work.

URP Leadership

Program Director: Nadhi Thekkek

Programs Manager: Purna Venugopalan

Initial co-creator and past Project Director: Tanu Sreedharan