Yollay - Rasika Kumar, Sahasra Sambamoorthi, Nadhi Thekkek: Unfiltered

Rasika Kumar
Dance
Rasika Kumar is a Bharatanatyam performer and choreographer, steeped in tradition but with contemporary sensibilities. She is currently the Associate Artistic Director of the Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose (ADC), having studied under her mother Mythili Kumar, Artistic Director of ADC, and other renowned teachers. Since 2005, Rasika has been a soloist, principal dancer, and choreographer for all of ADCs performance seasons. Her choreography has been featured in the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and SF WestWave Festival and has earned her an Arts Council of Silicon Valley Performing Arts Fellowship (2008). Rasikas collaborative rhythmic arrangement with Franco Imperial of San Jose Taiko garnered an Isadora Duncan Award in the Music category (2011). Last year, she won the Lakshmi Viswanathan Award from Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (Chennai, India) for her solo performance in the 2014 season.

Sahasra Sambamoorthi
Dance
Sahasra Sambamoorthi is currently co-president at Navatman. She learned Bharatanatyam under Guru Smt Kalaimamani Ramya Ramnarayan and is the recipient of various awards including the NJSCA Folk Arts Apprenticeship. Following her graduation from Columbia University and learning much from the semi-classical troupe there Taal, she created Navatman Dance in an attempt to explore the boundaries of Bharatanatyam. Currently, she is learning Kathak from Ramya Agrawal and has taken continues to work in odissi with Bijayini Satpathy, Surupa Sen, and Pavitra Bhatt (Nrityagram) and Kuchipudi with Kishore Mosalikanti.

Nadhi Thekkek
Dance
Nadhi Thekkek is the Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre, a bharatanatyam dance company based in San Francisco, California (USA). She operates on the belief that bharatanatyam, while classical, is a modern medium with potential to push boundaries of how we can use traditional art forms to understand place, identity, and politics. Nadhis work has been supported through: Zellerbach Community Arts Grants Dancers Group CA$H Grants California Arts Council CounterPulse East Bay Community Foundation Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME) through Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Nadhi has performed at various venues; Scotiabank Dance Centre (Vancouver), La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (NYC), Dance Place (D.C.), and Southbank Center (London). She has also worked as freelancer with Seeta Patel (London), Randee Paufve (Oakland), and her work was recently commissioned by the Oakland Ballet. Her last production, Broken Seeds Still Grow, created and 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, or the split between India and Pakistan (which created 15 million refugees and killed over 1 million people.) After realizing the parallels between then in South Asia and now in America, Nadhi and Rupy are creating a sequel Broken Seeds/Taking Root, premiering March 2019 at CounterPulse. This iteration is inspired by witness statements and records from the South Asian American Digital Archive, their First Days Project, Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, and others to examine how xenophobia continues to pervade the diaspora in America, and more specifically here in the Bay Area. Allowing these stories to occupy the space around us is an important part of Nadhis mission. For more info visit www.brokenseeds.com.

Roopa Mahadevan
Music
Roopa Mahadevan is a versatile Indian Classical vocalist. Born and raised in San Jose, California, Roopa underwent her major formative training in Carnatic vocal music under Asha Ramesh, disciple of the late Sangeetha Kalanidhi D.K. Jayaraman and Sri Nanganallur Ramanathan. In 2007, Roopa was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship by the U.S. Department of State to receive advanced Carnatic vocal training in Chennai, India under Smt. Suguna Varadachari, a senior guru of the Musiri Subramania Iyer tradition. Roopa has been a regular performer of Carnatic vocal concerts in the U.S. and India. She has been performing in all of the major sabhas in Chennai, India during the December music season, including the prestigious Music Academy. She has received praise from the Carnatic music fraternity and notable press, including The Hindu. She has also performed at the well-known Cleveland Thyagaraja Aradhana, which gave her the title Kala Ratna for her commitment to the pursuit of Carnatic music as a young American. Roopa is also an accomplished Bharathanatyam dancer who has performed her arangetram under the training of the Smt. Indumathy Ganesh, disciple of Padmashri Smt. Chitra Visweswaran. Roopa is a sought-after singer for Bharathanatyam productions and has sung for a variety of artists, including C.V. Chandrasekhar, Bragha Bessel, Mythili Prakash, Rasika Kumar, Preeti Vasudevan, Vidhya Subramaniam, Janaki Rangarajan, Aparna Ramaswamy, Abhinaya Dance Company, Ragamala Dance Company, and Shakti Dance Company (CA) among several others. Roopa also enjoys performing R&B/soul music and has lent her voice to several contemporary art projects, including two urban/R&B music albums Lovespeak (with Everyday People A Capella), Bring Back the Nyte, and the album *Calling All Dawns* composed by Christopher Tin, which won the 2011 Grammy for Best Crossover Classical Album. In 2011, Roopa performed an exciting acting and singing role in Bakwas Bumbug, a first-ever Desi Musical directed by Samrat Chakrabarti and Sanjiv Jhaveri and produced by Desipina in New York City. Roopa has been fortunate to perform at prestigious venues, including the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Roopa is the artistic director of the NYC-based Navatman Music Collective, an Indian Classical Vocal ensemble, conceived by Navatman founder Sahi Sambamoorthy. Roopa was an inaugural 2013 fellow of IndianRaga and is a frequent instructor for the IndianRaga Labs program. Roopa received her Bachelors degree in Biology and Masters degree in Cognitive Science from Stanford University. She is based in New York City, where she enjoys a mission-driven career in public health policy while pursuing her artistic passions with equal vigor.

Rohan Prabhudesai
Music
Rohan has been actively studying music for the past 18 years. He began his training in Indian Hindustani classical music on the harmonium on one of his trips to India at the Goa Kala Academy. Later, he continued this musical pursuit under the guidance of Dr. Kedar Naphade, a senior disciple of Pt. Tulsidas Borkar. At the same time he started learning harmonium, he studied classical piano with Mr. Edwin Lopez, the concert master and conductor of Crescent Avenue Presbyterian church music program. He has studied classical contemporary composition at NYU Steinhardt and Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.

Arun Ramamurthy
Music
Arun Ramamurthy is a versatile violinist, composer and educator based in NYC. A disciple of the celebrated Carnatic violinist brothers, Dr. Mysore Manjunath & Sri Mysore Nagaraj, Arun has become one of the countrys leading Indian Classical and crossover musicians. Growing up in New Jersey, he trained in both Indian and Western classical styles. He has carved a niche for himself as a multifaceted artist, performing internationally in both traditional Carnatic and Hindustani settings as well as bridging genres with his own innovative projects. Arun has been fortunate to perform with esteemed artists such as Dr. Balamurali Krishna, Sudha Ragunathan, Anindo Chatterjee, T.N. Seshagopoloan, Mashkoor Ali Khan, Marc Cary, Awa Sangho among others. He leads the Arun Ramamurthy Trio, an ensemble that brings a fresh approach to age-old South Indian classical repertoire and raga inspired originals. Praised by All About Jazz as a beautiful, exotic, ear-opening listening experience the Trios debut album Jazz Carnatica was picked by NPRs New Sounds as a Top New Release. As a composer, Arun has created new works for his Trio, for various Indian classical dance performances, and for the pioneering musician's collective Brooklyn Raga Massive. Recently, Arun was commissioned through New Music USA to compose original music for Malini Srinivasan's 'Appeasing Radhika', an ambitious project investigating Devadasi lives in Indian Classical performing arts. Arun is a co-founder and Artistic Director of Brooklyn Raga Massive, a collective of forward thinking musicians rooted-in and inspired-by the classical music of India. He created the concert series Carnatic Sundays at Cornelia Street Caf, an iconic jazz venue in New Yorks West Village. As an educator, Arun teaches students ranging from beginners to professional musicians in Indian music performance, technique and theory. He has taught workshops on Indian classical music at music schools, universities, conservatories and summer music programs.

Malavika Kumar Walia
Dance
Malavika Kumar Walia is the daughter and student of Mythili Kumar. As a senior company dancer, choreographer, and teacher, she has been teaching, dancing and performing nattuvangam for arangetrams, solo recitals of Mythili & Rasika, and for company productions since 2000. In a 2004 performance in Chennai, she was lauded by a critic as the star of the show for her precise, well-intoned nattuvangam. She has performed in many of Abhinaya Dance Companys productions with key roles and has toured with the company to India and around the U.S.A. She also coaches students towards their Arangetrams (solo debut performances). She has also composed numerous jathis and choreographed items for solo and group performa

Rasika Kumar, Sahasra Sambamoorthi, Nadhi Thekkek: Unfiltered

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