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A league titled Choreographing Continuum, volition beryllium held successful Bengaluru this play successful representation of renowned Kathak dancer Maya Rao, to commemorate her contributions to Indian creation and to research ways to transportation her bequest forward.
The league is being hosted by the Natya Institute of Kathak & Choreography (NIKC), 1 of India’s premier institutions for modern classical dance, founded successful 1964 by Maya with societal reformer and activistic Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay.
The 2026 edition, led by Maya’s girl and dancer-choreographer, Madhu Natraj, laminitis of STEM Dance Kampni, volition research her bequest arsenic surviving praxis — however choreographic reasoning moves done time, responding to clime change, AI, healing, identity, and societal transformation.
Dance, Madhu says, occupies a salient spot successful cultural, social, and governmental spaces. “Maya was an avid academic, researcher, renaissance pistillate and guru. This league celebrates the bequest of the pistillate who started it all.”
Through this conference, Madhu hopes to look astatine documentation and archives for the future. “We volition besides research the relation of creation successful a polarised world.”
The two-day lawsuit volition bring unneurotic artists, scholars, philanthropists, and taste thinkers for performances, conversations, and immersive archival experiences. It volition see Yatra, a Natya retrospective, arsenic good arsenic performances by Project Abhinaya, Palimpsest and Asha Esperanza, among others, arsenic good arsenic an accumulation centred connected ethos, echoes and expressions.
This year’s variation volition diagnostic Datuk Ramli Ibrahim, a Malaysian choreographer, authors Rohini Nilekani, Shobha Narayan and Vikram Sampath, dancers Sandhya Purecha, Anita Ratnam and Siddhi Goel, Amit Wanchoo, societal activistic and entrepreneur, and creator Masoom Parmar artist. There volition besides beryllium a curated locomotion and a flamenco creation workshop, Unleash the Fire.
Madhu believes dance, arsenic an creation form, has been diluted. “If you look astatine Natya Shastra (the Sanskrit treatise connected the performing arts), it has ever been accommodative and evolving, pollinated by poetry, architecture and politics, changing with the times. Now, with world TV becoming an important stakeholder successful the amusement industry, the purity of the creation signifier has been diluted.”
Madhu hopes to engender much conversations astir dance, and says events similar these constituent radical successful the close direction.
Choreographing Continuum volition instrumentality spot connected January 31 and February 1 astatine Sabha BLR betwixt 9.30am and 5.30pm. Register for the lawsuit here.
