December 5, 12, 11-1pm: Sheetal Gandhi
Sheetal is interested in movement that is gestural, expressive and musically complex. She draws on her inspirations including kathak dance, vocal percussion, popping and waving, modern dance, classic jazz, Michael Jackson, West African dance, Pilates, Yoga and Bharatanatyam mudras. This two-part course will use the complex, precise rhythms of the North Indian classical dance form Kathak, as a springboard into exploring the musician-dancer body. Choreographically, we will explore the possibilities within the drum and dance language, using our voices and dance to create highly specific movement sequences and soundscapes. All levels and techniques welcome. The class should warm you up, cool you down, and keep you groovin’ in between!

Sheetal Gandhi is interested in creating a space that brings the many sides of her personality together: dramatic, wry, Indian, American, dancer, percussionist, abstract, chameleon, precise, impulsive, singer and storyteller. She draws on her strengths and professional successes from the subway platform to the Broadway stage to create work that blurs cultural and disciplinary boundaries, promoting intercultural understanding through artistic excellence. In 1993, Sheetal’s passion for rhythm led her to Ghana, West Africa where she spent a year studying and performing the traditional music and dances of the region. Sheetal grew up folk dancing within her own culture and in 1995 moved to India for six months to further study the North Indian classical dance form Kathak. As a percussionist, she plays the calabash, or dried gourd, and the West African xylophone. Sheetal worked as a creator and performer in Cirque du Soleil’sDralion, and toured with the international cast from 1999-2001. Her New York credits include: leading role in the Broadway production of Bombay Dreams, Stephen Schwartz’s Children of Eden at the Paper Mill Playhouse, and the revival of Hair. Gandhi was Co-Artistic Director of the modern dance company California Contemporary Dancers in San Francisco from 2001-2004 and holds an MFA in Dance/Choreography from UCLA’s Dept. of World Arts and Cultures. Most recently she has been touring her multi-disciplinary one-woman show, Bahu-Beti-Biwi (Daughter-in-law, Daughter, Wife), with recent performances in Los Angeles at the REDCAT NOW Festival and in New York with the National Asian American Theater Festival. For more info. visit www.sheetalgandhi.com <http://www.sheetalgandhi.com/>