Vilaya 2024
Nandanik Dance Troupe presents Vilaya, The Confluence Festival of Indian classical dances.
Festival Curated by Nandini Mandal
April 6, at New Hazlett Theater 4:30 pm
Parking: Allegheny Center Parking/Street Parking
Experience the splendor of a gamut of Indian classical dances enriched with literature, poetry, music, stories in a variety of languages and format presented in costumes from the region.
While Tanveer Alam burns the floor presenting Kathak, Akhilesh Vadari will dazzle us with his Bharatanatyam, Bartha Biswas will present enchanting Mohiniattam. And the audience will be mesmerized by the musical Dance theater Tagore's Chitrangada, The Warrior Princess/In Quest of Truth, led by Nandini Mandal, Roosha Mandal and Tanveer Alam.
This event is Supported by Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and PNC Bank.
Tickets:
General: $25
Senior : $20
Children (6 +) and Students (with ID): $10
Meet The Artists
Nandini Mandal
Nandini Mandal is a renowned dancer and teacher of Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form. She started learning Bharatanatyam under the guidance of her teacher, Snigdha Pal. Kalamandalam Venkitt, and Preetha Venkitt of Kolkata India. She specialized in Abhinaya or expressions under the legendary Guru Dr. Sonal Mansingh. She received the Artist Opportunity Grant in 2016 and completed a master workshop in Advanced Kathakali and Mohiniattam dance forms in India. She is training in Manipuri under Sanjib Bhattacharya. She has choreographed and performed at various cultural festivals in India and at different locations in the US. She is constantly expanding her creativity by collaborating with local artistes and performing in schools, colleges and at other public forums. Through the Nandanik Dance Troupe she conceptualized and curated the first Indian classical dance festival VILAYA in 2018 with a two-day long series on dance, exhibition and panel discussion involving ten dancers. She has choreographed and directed dance dramas including Chitrangada, Shyama , Raja , Card Country , Prakriti - Matrika Mrittika, Chandalika. She was the cultural ambassador of India with the World Affairs Council, UNO, Pittsburgh chapter (in 2009 and 2012) Her philanthropic activities include fundraising through Dance for Cure for Leukemia Lymphoma Foundation in 2015, and American Cancer Society from 2017 to 2022. With her students, she has performed at the World Square, STEAM CARNIVAL, WPXI Holiday Parade, Bicentennial celebration of Pittsburgh, Rally for Unity, Pittsburgh Festival, for India's past President Abdul Kalam, and at many museums, schools and universities including the YMCA, Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind.
Nandini participated in Pittsburgh Women’s Leadership Experience (PWLE) as a panelist, in responsibility as a grantee of the GPAC Lift grant. Her most rewarding event was to present a Bharatanatyam based musical on the life of Christ before Mother Teresa in 1993. A leukemia survivor, Nandini is a dance activist, and is now focused on several outreach activities such as teaching dance to rescued boys of Child in Need Institute, CINI, Kolkata. Recently she also volunteered to teach after school program at Garfield’s Assemble as part of Project-logue Home Language using dance as a language of expression, conducted the Rhythmscapes presentation at the STEAM carnival at Children’s Museum, presented Chandalika at Welcome America Festival at U I UC, and led the Nandanik Dance troupe at the WPXI Holiday Parade in downtown Pittsburgh.
Roosha Mandal
Roosha Mandal is a current medical student at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She has been training in Bharatanatyam for the past 16 years and Navanritya for the past 10 years at the Nandanik Dance Academy. She has blossomed into a regular instructor teaching the junior and senior levels for the last 6 years. In India, Roosha attended master classes in Kathakali and Mohiniattam as well as Bharatanatyam under Gurus Kalamandalam Venkitt and Preetha Venkitt of Calcutta. In addition, she has completed workshops under Guru Dr. Sonal Mansingh in Abhinaya (expressions), Guru Darshana Javeri in Manipuri, Pavitra Bhat in Bharatanatyam. She is currently under tutelage of Kalakshetra Amarnath Ghosh in Bharatanatyam, and Sri Sanjib Bhattacharya in Manipuri. Roosha also underwent rigorous training in jazz-lyrical, modern, ballet and hip-hop dance at the Thomas Studio of Performing Arts and The Academy of Dance by Lori for several years and performed these dance forms in annual recitals.
In 2012-13, she completed an intensive apprenticeship program at Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in contemporary dance with renowned traveling companies. Over the years, Roosha traveled with Nandanik Dance Academy and Troupe to perform in different corners of the USA. She played key roles in the Nandanik dance Troupe's productions including the VILAYA festival in 2018-2019. She has performed in the Bicentennial of Pittsburgh, Three-Rivers Regatta, Chinese Dragon Boat Festival, Western PA School for the Blind, Phipps Conservatory, Bayer International, Pittsburgh International Folk Festival, India Day, Bengali Association of Pittsburgh, and at numerous schools and colleges in the Greater Pittsburgh area through the World Affairs Council. She also taught Indian dance to children in a summer camp at the Thelma Lovette YMCA in Pittsburgh. Roosha graduated in the Sciences and Humanities Scholar program and is a recipient of the Jack G. Buncher Memorial Presidential Scholarship from Carnegie Mellon University, where she choreographed and performed every semester with Dancers Symposium. Roosha also completed a service year as an AmeriCorps member at an FQHC through the National Health Corps and partnered with organizations such as Hello Neighbor and 412-Food Rescue.
Tanveer Alam
Toronto-based Tanveer Alam started his Kathak training with Sudeshna Maulik and continued further nuanced studies with guru Sandhya Desai. Alam is a 2019 graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.
Alam has performed in the works of Rina Singha, Lata Pada, Padmini Chettur, Brandy Leary, Harikishan S. Nair, Sashar Zarif, Lucy Rupert, and Peter Chin, to name a few. As an emerging choreographer, he has presented work at SummerWorks Festival, Battery Dance Festival +, MAI - Montréal, arts, interculturels, CanAsian Dance Festival: Grit Short Dances, and Tangente. Alam is also invested within the dance sector as an Alliance Lead at The South Asian Dance Alliance of Canada, a guest curator alongside Nithya Garg at Dancemakers (2023 season), and an Artistic Associate with TOES FOR DANCE (2023 season).
Across the 22/23 season, Alam premiered The Tagore Project (co-choreographed by Atri Nundy), at Tangente and Sampradaya Dance Creations, and In Multiplicity (co-created with Nithya Garg) as a part of the Independent Projects stream at Nuit Blanche (Humber Galleries). Furthermore, he presented Haazri, a new Kathak solo at The National Ballet of Canada’s Sharing The Stage program. His first full length solo entitled Leher, premiered at Native Earth’s Aki Studio in June 2023.
Akhilesh “Akhi” Vadari
Akhilesh “Akhi” Vadari, is professional actor, dancer, choreographer and is currently in his junior year at Columbia College Chicago majoring in dance. He is training in Bharatnatyam with esteemed Natyacharyas Sri Renjith Babu and Smt Vijna Vasudevan from Chennai, India. He has directed and choreographed numerous solo and group performances for fundraising, international dance and other events in the greater Seattle area and has performed in other cities across North America as well as internationally in Chennai, India. He is a National YoungArts Winner for Dance and has won several awards at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival, and more recently won a second place at the Aikiyam Festival in Chennai
He has also acted in many professional musical theater shows at the 5th Avenue, ACT and Seattle Children’s Theaters, including Cinderella and Ramayana.
Akhi founded House of Kala, a non-profit organization, with a vision of promoting performing arts among youth. Leading a team of dancers consisting of middle and high school students, he has raised over $100,000 in the past years for children with special needs.
Dedicated to fostering a vibrant arts ecosystem House of Kala now collaborates with diverse cities and arts organizations across the state to secure grants and orchestrate transformative programs for emerging artists, creating a bridge between the present and the future of the artistic landscape.
