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| IAAC Dance Committee |
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Aroon Shivdasani, Executive & Artistic Director, IAAC
Leena Sukumar, IAAC Dance Director
Jonathan Hollander, Artistic Director, Battery Dance Company/Downtown Dance Festival
Rajika Puri, Curator
Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Curator
Preeti Vasudevan,
Curator
Parul Shah,
Curator
Satish Kolluri
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| Aroon Shivdasani, Executive & Artistic Director, IAAC
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 Executive Director and founding member of the Indo-American Arts Council, Aroon is passionate about its mission to build an awareness of Indian artists and artistic disciplines (performing, visual, literary and folk arts in North America) as well as nurturing and promoting emerging artists from the Indian subcontinent.
A Masters Degree in English literature and drama as well as a Diploma in Marketing & Advertising, Aroon has worked in marketing, advertising, media research, taught both school and college in New York, run a theatre company in Canada, been a docent at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, been Editor of the Junior League Newsletter in Mclean Va, acted, danced, painted, thrown pots, worked in ceramics and stained glass. She left her position as Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing & English literature as well as VP of her husband's marketing company to take on her current position in 1998.
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| Leena Sukumar, IAAC Dance Director |
 Leena is honored to be the Dance Director for the IAAC’s Erasing Borders Dance Festival. Leena has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in Marketing and Strategy from the Chicago Booth School of Business. She has had formal training in BharataNatyam since she was 7 years old. While working as an engineer at Motorola in Chicago, she continued to pursue dance under the tutelage of Hema Rajagopalan of Natya Dance Theater. Leena got involved with Aroon and her passionate band of volunteers who make wonderful things happen at IAAC, soon after moving to NYC. She has a full time challenging role as VP of Marketing/Sales at mySkin, a startup in skincare diagnostics. She is fascinated about all things digital and tech, writing, art, movies, photography, painting, NYC urban pursuits, travel/ outdoor adventures. Leena is excited about putting together the festival and its infinite possibilities for this year.
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| Jonathan Hollander, Artistic Director, Battery Dance Company/Downtown Dance Festival |
 Jonathan is the Artistic Director, Founder and President of the Battery Dance Company, Fulbright Lecturer, India, 1992 and the Artistic Director & Founder of the Downtown Dance Festival
For well over a decade, American choreographer Jonathan Hollander has built and maintained a busy cultural bridge between India and the U.S. He has introduced American audiences to some of the highest exponents of Indian classical dance and has helped to create a fertile ground for contemporary experimentation and collaboration by creative artists in India and the U.S.
Three months in India as a Fulbright Lecturer in Dance in 1992, a period in which Hollander taught dance workshops at Darpana, Kadamb and the M.S. University, choreographed new works on Indian dancers, collaborated with designers from the National Institute of Design, and escorted his Battery Dance Company on a 6-city tour, was the beginning of what was to become a pioneering mission.
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| Rajika Puri, Curator |
 Rajika Puri was trained in Bharatanatyam and Odissi and performed internationally in solo recitals, including a command performance for the President of Mexico. Currently she focuses on developing different kinds of danced stories in which she sings and chants in Sanskrit and narrates in English as she dances (cf. her "Ted India" INK talk on 'The Importance of Myth"). Major productions: 'Union Severed' (Asia Society), 'Conversations with Shiva', (Joyce SoHo), 'Devimalika' (Duke @ 42nd St), 'Tapasya' (Joyce SoHo). Her latest work is an hour-long retelling of the life of 'Helen of Troy': ELENI of SPARTA (Epic Women Festival, Chennai & Sacred River Festival, Maheshwar).
An MA in the ‘Anthropology of Movement’ (NYU), Rajika writes, lectures, and gives workshops on Indian dance and theater. Her pre-performance talks on stage for Indian dance shows (e.g. World Music Institute, Cleveland Museum of Art) are extremely popular. She also co-curates World Music Institute's 'Dancing the Gods' festival.
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| Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Curator |
 Uttara currently teaches dance at Barnard College/Columbia University and at the Alvin Ailey Dance School. Earlier as a dancer, her solo show, brought modern dance, BharataNatyam and yoga, to stages of India, Europe, East Europe, Japan and the United States. For her pioneering choreography she was recently awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi national award. (India) Uttara also served on various global research (CORD) and educational (IB) Committees, and as Performing Arts advisor to the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the National Center of Performing Arts, Mumbai. Awards for writing include AHRB Fellowship for South Asian Dance Research, London, The Graduate Research Award from CORD, USA, the Homi Bhabha Fellowship, India, and a Ford Foundation research project (USA) on changing demographies of cultures in the U.S. Currently, she is even more invested in the ongoing culture wars around global re-flows of body knowledges. |
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| Preeti Vasudevan, Curator |
 Award-winning choreographer and educator Preeti is an exponent of classical Bharatanatyam creating new provocative contemporary works from the Indian tradition. Original works performed by her company, Thresh, have earned international acclaim for their fresh juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary voices (2009 META* award for The Absent Lover and 7 nominations in 2013 for Savitri- dancing in the forest of death).
A few recent highlights include: Emerging choreographer series (Joyce Foundation, NY 2003); International Choreographer's Residency, American Dance Festival (ADF); Faculty (ADF 2004); Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (2009); Advance theater training with director Anne Bogart and the SITI company (NY); Presenter for the 2013 TEDxBarnard (Columbia University).
Preeti’s ground-breaking educational website, Dancing for the Gods has been developed to build a cultural bridge through creative Indian dance. Preeti holds a Master's in Dance Studies from Laban Centre London.
[www.threshdance.org]
*META – Mahindra Excellence in Theater Awards
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| Parul Shah, Curator |
 Parul Shah is an internationally acclaimed Kathak dancer and choreographer whose work is expanding the classical medium beyond cultural boundaries. With a dedication to excellence, Shah preserves the form’s aesthetic integrity while developing a unique and powerful vocabulary.
Behind Shah’s work is decades of rigorous Kathak training under the world-renowned guru and choreographer, Padmashree Kumudini Lakhia. Parul’s repertoire illustrates the soulfulness of the Kathak form while establishing new ways of movement drawn from the classical style. Her work includes traditional solo pieces alongside compelling contemporary group choreographies.
Shah’s New York studio is home to both the parul shah dance company and her training facility. She has presented her solo and group works at major venues around the world, including City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C, Jacobs Pillow and at the Japan Forum Foundation in Japan. She has collaborated on numerous international projects and presented in Asia, Europe, and North America.
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| Satish Kolluri |
 Dr. Satish Kolluri is Chair and Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Pace University. His teaching and research interests center on Indian and Hong Kong cinema, Secularism and Religion, and Parenting and Education. |
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| The Indo-American Arts Council is a 501 3 not-for-profit secular arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of artists of Indian origin in the performing arts, visual arts, literary arts and folk arts. For information please visit |
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