Ritu-Seasons will bring together more than 50 dancers from the tri-state area of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana to present the six seasons of tropical India through a mélange of eight dance styles, each one highlighting an aspect of a season.  A rare chance for the local audience to experience the more than 2000 year old art form known as 'Yakshgana', it promises to be a feast to the eye.

The program will showcase the Indian classical styles of Bharathnatyam, Kathak and Odissi, as well as western styles including modern and ballet.  It will also feature Balinese and Persian dances, which have a lot in common with Indian dance forms.  These two styles will illustrate their unique ways of saluting nature through dance.  The surya namaskara of yoga will be highlighted as the traditional form of acknowledging the very reason for the existence of seasons.

This program is funded in-part by Ohio Arts Council and Greater Cincinnati Foundation.

About NrityArpana School of Performing Arts:

Founded in 2004, the Nrityarpana School of Performing Arts is a non-profit organization.  It was envisioned as a facility that offered training in the classical art form of dance and created a platform to present innovative, thought provoking powerful productions that both entertain and educate the participants and the audience.  Over the past years the school has been successful in creating productions on topics as varied as the cross-cultural classical, the probing with a blend of activism, the innovative and unconventional, and the intensely patriotic.

About the Director:

Anupama Rao Mirle, known as Anupa, trained under Dr. Jayashree Rajagopalan and has an MFA in Bharathnatyam. Fortunate to have studied under the visionary scholar and performer Dr. Padma Subramaniam, she applies her unique training to create pieces that highlight world dance. Ritu is one such expression of this training. Her students get the rare opportunity to work with dancers from other styles and learn the art of cross-cultural choreography.  Hailed as an exceptionally creative choreographer, Anupa has the ability to blend different media and art forms into classical dance creating breakthrough idioms in choreography.