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Dance Festival Committee
Aroon Shivdasani Executive & Artistic Director IAAC
Deepsikha Chatterjee Dance Festival Director
Rajika Puri Chief Curator
Uttara Asha Coorlawala Curator
Parul Shah Curatorial Advisor
Michael Collins Producer
Suman Madhuri Marketing & Publicity
Sangeeta Jain Photographer
Katherine Filesta Videographer
Vasanti Mirchandani Hospitality Director
Dominique Legros Dance Intern |
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| Curators |
| Rajika Puri, Curator |
 Trained in Bharatanatyam and Odissi, Rajika has presented solo recitals of Indian dance throughout Europe, the US, Latin America and India. She has also starred in several western theatre productions, including The Transposed Heads (directed by Julie Taymor at Lincoln Center Theatre) and films like Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala. Rajika is now known for a unique form of danced story telling in which she narrates in English, sings and chants - often embodying different characters - while she dances. Co-curator for Erasing Borders Dance since its inception, she is now in demand both as curator (World Music Institute’s Dancing the Gods festival; From the Horse’s Mouth celebrates Indian Dance in America) and as onstage slide lecturer/presenter at festivals & museums in the US and India. |
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| Deepsikha Chatterjee Dance Festival Director |
 Deepsikha enjoys teaching diverse students at Hunter College CUNY. She has a B.Sc. in Psychology and BFA from India and her MFA from Florida State University. Her costume design for Butoh Medea received the Best Costume Design award at United Solo 2014. Her designs have been seen at Barnard College, Women’s Project, New York Musical Festival, United Solo and Pan Asia Repertory. She worked at Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera and Utah Shakespearean Festival. She researches and publishes about costumes of Indian film and dance and has presented at USITT, Costume Society of America and Rubin Museum of Art. In 2017 she was invited to co-curate the Indo-American Arts Council’s Erasing Borders Dance Festival. |
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| Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Curator |
 Uttara Asha Coorlawala
teaches dance courses at Barnard College/Columbia University, and at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School Professional Program. Earlier, her solo show brought modern dance, Bharatanatyam and yoga, to stages of India, Europe, East Europe, Japan and the United States as she represented both the USA and India as a cultural representative. She served as a Performing Arts advisor to the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the National Center of Performing Arts, Mumbai, and greatly enjoys the challenges and social exchanges of co-curating the Erasing Borders Dance Festival, New York City. Uttara has served on various global dance research (CORD) and educational (International Baccalaureate or IB) committees. Her articles have been published in Discourses in Dance, Dance Research Journal and anthologies. Recently awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi ward for pioneering choreography, she is even more invested in the ongoing culture wars around global re-flows of body knowledges. |
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