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SHE
Feminine Identity Through Movement & Storytelling
Performer
SHE is a Bharata Natyam production that takes the audience on the mythological journey of the Devi as well as personalised narratives, weaving through classical sagas of the goddess and ending with the communal ordeals of women.
It utilises emotion as its through-line and creates a parallel and continuity between the immortal goddess in all her forms and the mortal woman.
According to the Rig Veda, the feminine is the essence of the universe, the one who creates all matter and consciousness, the eternal and infinite, the metaphysical and empirical reality, the soul of everything.
SHE is a tribute not only to the divine feminine but also to the devadasis, the original storytellers of Bharata Natyam who were stripped of their stories in the early part of the 20th century.
Through their original interpretations of these compositions, the dancers bring the past into the present to imagine different futures. SHE passes on the tradition of emotional exploration from teacher to student and dancer to audience.
Accompanying Dancers:
Visalini Sundaram
Shefali Appali
Nitya Pujara
Presented by:
In association with:
Performer
Ramya Harishankar
Ramya Harishankar is the artistic director of the Arpana Dance Company (ADC), a school/company of Bharata Natyam in California which celebrated its 40 anniversary in 2022. She was recently awarded the Individual Artist Fellowship and recognized as a ‘legacy artist’ by the California Arts Council.
Recipient of several grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council and Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Harishankar is a 2-time National Endowment of the Arts’ Choreographic Fellow. Her solo career has taken her all over the world, performing extensively in India, Asia, Europe, Australia, and N. America. Her forte is abhinaya/interpretive dance, and she regularly conducts workshops/master classes both online and live in N. America, Europe, Australia, and India.
She co-founded a nonprofit in 1989 to bring Indian classical dance to SoCal which morphed into the Ektaa Center in 2004 serving the greater community. As an artist on Segerstrom Performing Arts Center’s Arts Teach roster, Harishankar has been sharing her art with school children across S. California since 1989.
