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.
