September 8, 2025 • 14 mins
The New York City based Indo-American Arts Council is a not-for-profit organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of arts and artists of Asian Indian heritage. From September 18-21 in Manhattan, IAAC presents the Erasing Borders Dance Festival, featuring classical dance from India. Our guest is Deepsikha Chatterjee, Festival Director.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. Located in New York,
the Indo American Arts Council is a not for profit
arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an
awareness of arts and artists of Asian Indian heritage. From
September eighteenth to twenty first, the Indo American Arts Council
presents the Erasing Borders Dance Festival, featuring classical bands from India.
(00:36):
Our guest is Deepshika Chatterjee. Festival Director Dipshaka Chatterjee. Thank
you for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thank you, Nina.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Dipsuka Chatterjee is a tenured faculty member of Theatre at
Hunter College and has a PhD in Theater and Performance
from Cuny Graduate Center. Since twenty seventeen, she has also
served as the dance director for the Erasing Borders Dance Festival.
You can find out more, including details on tickets, at
i AAC dot us. Why is it called the Erasing
(01:04):
Borders Dance Festival?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Oh, that's a great question, Nina. I think my predecessors
and one of the curators who's also still with our
festival is she and another esteemed dance curator, Rajikapuri, they
thought of this name. I want to say fifteen years
before I stepped in, and at the time there was
(01:27):
a lot of diaspora Indians who were practicing Indian dance.
So even though we say Indian dance, it's being performed
all over the world, and it's being performed by people
of Indian heritage, people of second generation Indians. Now more
and more non Indians who do not have the Indian
(01:50):
heritage and the lineage, but respect that practice and the
performance tradition and hence the dance. John Really, genres really
are beyond the borders.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's very interesting. Indian dance I know very little about,
but the provenance of Indian dance and culture goes back
a long way and it's such a huge part of
the culture. Can you talk a little bit about that.
We don't have the same thing in the US.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, if you don't have the same thing in the US.
But interestingly, the way Indian dance, the provenance of Indian
dance is similar to a lot of the provenance of
a lot of dance traditions, music traditions around the world.
So we actually see some of that in India, in Asia.
I was in Indonesia for example last year. Indonesia has
(02:40):
a long history of this kind of practice. In African traditions,
there are these kinds of practices. So a lot of
Indian dance were called temple dances, and they were performed
as a dedication to temple deities, as entertainment for the public,
(03:00):
as storytelling methods of the stories of the gods and
the kings and the people who were important and necessary
to learn or know about. So that was a lot
of Indian dance, I want to say, in fifteen sixteenth century,
and a lot of that even now. Actually some of
my research is from Assam and some of the dances
(03:23):
are still done in temples and the monks, the in
monasteries practiced the dances. Hathria dance is one example of
that from Assam region of India. So a lot of
that tradition came through and it comes from a very
old text called the Nadia Shastra, which is over two
thousand years old, almost as old as any of the
(03:45):
Greek literature around the same time, and Nadishastra mentions a
couple of the dance traditions and they have been carried
over centuries in temple spaces as dedication, ceremonies and as entertainment.
There were some changes that happened in this space with
British colonization of India. And we know of the British colonization,
(04:09):
but colonization of different different European countries were happening in
India at the same time. There was the Portuguese, there
was French. The British obviously had the biggest presence, and
India start independence from the British in nineteen forty seven.
But the dance traditions really and like one of the
northern Indian dance traditions Kathha, that's actually even practice in
(04:31):
Pakistan regions of the region, and there are some artists
who still practice Gthhab in Pakistan. And similarly, some of
the southern traditions actually changed and morphed and moved from India.
Sri Lanka minmar as I said mentioned Indonesia, Thailand, so
(04:52):
you'll see a lot of these connections across the region.
For the dance traditions and the ritualist ritual practices nineteen
forty seven. A lot of that has separated from the
ritual practice and is mostly performed in sort of secular,
democratic kind of spaces, so theaters and you know, dance schools.
(05:14):
But even now, even now a lot of dance schools
and dance teachers do teach their students to make an
offering or make you know, have an altar on the
stage because they are considered kind of you know, sacred
in a way. However, a lot of our lot of
dancers are also going beyond those traditions and practicing in
(05:35):
very modern ways. So we'll have two dance companies this year,
Thresh Dance and Rovaco Dance, who are creating new vocabularies,
you know, and they have a body of work that
they've built Thresh for example, pretty vas so they even
of Thresh Dance, she has a body of work for
over ten years now in creating new vocabularies out of
(05:57):
Indian dance.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We're speaking with deep Shiga Chattergy. She is festival director
of the Erasing Borders Dance Festival from September eighteenth to
twenty first hosted by the Indo American Arts Council. It
features classical dance from India. You can find out more
at IAAC dot us. You're listening to get connected on
one six point seven light FM. I'mina del Rio. Let's
(06:18):
talk about the performances. You actually open with a lecture
at Lincoln Center at the New York Library for the
Performing Arts on September eighteenth. Briefly, what's that about?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
NYPL has done a fantastic job of creating this space
for disseminating about Indian dance. They've done demonstrations, they have
shown how what is the heritage of Indian dance and
I NYPL also has a beautiful Indian dance archive in
the Jerome Robins Dance Division, So they're the ones who
host that part of the FESTIVALIA.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The performance is the main performances are on the evenings
of September twentieth and twenty first at a Ley Citygroup Theater.
It's right there at the corner of West forty fourth
and ninth Avenue. Can you talk about themers.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, we're so excited. The first night we have preadi
Shni Govin. She's the marquee performer. She's coming in from
India for the festival, and then we have a whole
series of dancers who are performing ODC Dance Trina Sarkar,
we have Chitrish Dance Company performing Katak. They are out
(07:22):
of California. And we have a dance school also, Dejeli
Dance School from New Jersey. So we have been inviting
dance schools who are part and parcel of the American
fabric now and they usually do a sort of welcome
piece every year. And similarly on Sunday. Our Sunday lineup
is I think tradition kind of also meeting modern modernism.
(07:47):
So we have our anchor performers, Rama vaid Nathan also
coming from India with her daughters Sanidhi and Dakshina, and
alongside we will have Kalaniti Dance Group. Actually Kalanity Dance
Group is on Saturday. I got that mixed up. And
we have Pritty Vasudevin's group, We have Thresh Dance. We
(08:10):
have Rovaco Dance who are both experimenting and kind of
looking at Indian dance and modern through modern lens. And
then we have an ODC Welcoming group ODC Dance Company
based out of New Jersey. So we have an exciting lineup,
and then we have Kuchapuri performer, which is also one
of the classical traditions from India. Pranam Miyasuri is performing
(08:31):
that and she's coming in from Texas to perform. So
we really have performers from all over the country coming
together in New York.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You also have, you know, with Indian dance, you can
as you spoke, you can pull from so many different areas.
What did you want to present with this year's festival?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Oh my god, that's such a difficult question. We had
over two hundred applications this year and we are only
able to choose such a small number of artists. So
thank you to all the artists who apply, and we
love everyone. It's limited space, so we can't have everyone
we you know, really we had over fifty applications that
we were like wowed by, but it's really hard to
(09:09):
make this selection. Odic was not a genre we had
presented a lot, so we really wanted to include odic.
Cuthah Dance Company, a Jit thrish Das Dance Company, fabulous group.
They actually just finished tours in India also and they
will be performing with one of the musicians from New York,
(09:31):
so they'll have live music in the performance. Also, they
are fabulous, So we really try to do multiple genres
so that people audience who's coming in get a sense of,
you know, the variety and the richness of Indian dance landscape.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You are a professor of theater with a deep background
in costume design. How does your design experience influence your
approach to the festival.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh, that's a great question. I actually got involved with
the festival because of my re search on costumes and
masks in Indian dance. So there was a genre Purulia
Cho and it's my big desire to present Chow. We
have not been able to present it yet in India.
I was doing that research in twenty fifteen, between twenty
(10:15):
thirteen and twenty fifteen and ut senior curator and she
knew about that work I was doing, so she invited
me as a curator because I was learning about the
dance and then learning about the costumes. So Indian dance
in the audience will see each of the genres have
a specific costume and artists work, you know, change costumes,
but they kind of have an existing vocabulary and they
(10:39):
tweak within that vocabulary. You know, with color, with shape, form,
but some of the formalization of Indian dance that has
happened in post colonial India has happened in costume aspect
of the dances. So you know, I enjoy those visual
design aspects. And you know, there are other curators like
(11:00):
Kuta as a dance scholar and dancer herself. There is
Shrinidi Ragawan Shuti Mohan who are also dance practitioners and teachers.
And then pray Apotel jin Won are kata practitioners and
have their own dance schools. Jin actually is Korean but
lived in India for fifteen years and learned Kathak the
(11:22):
dance as well as tabla the percussion. So our curatorial
team is bringing in multiple perspectives into the process. And
the Pashasur who's a graduate from UTA's classes at Barnard
College and has grown up in the US as a
dance practitioner of Kathak, so each of us are bringing
a different perspective into our selection process.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
The Indo American Arts Council presents the Erasing Borders Dance
Festival from September eighteenth to twenty first, featuring dance from
India can you talk a little bit about sort of
ticket price ranges and how to get tickets.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
We have a good problem this year. Our Saturday tickets
sold out. We might open up a few number of tickets,
but tickets range from thirty dollars to fifty five dollars
depending on you know, the rows and et cetera arrangement.
And they're on event right, so audience members who are
excited can go look in event right for their Raising
(12:19):
Border Stance Festival and purchase tickets there. We also have
two great workshops. Rama bay D Nathan, who's coming in
from India as a bath Nati practitioner, is teaching a
fantastic workshop balance of the body and you know how
to balance left and right, have a balance upper body
lower body. Her workshop is called Tula or the Balance,
(12:40):
and I encouraged answers to go and buy tickets for
the workshop. It's a two hour workshop on Saturday, so
it'll be it'll be really exciting. And there is a
Bollywood exercise workshop on Sunday that will be added soon.
We're working on it. So that's I think, you know,
as an exercise form. Ballllyywood has done a really great
(13:01):
job of Bollywood the film genre to the vocabulary in Bollywood,
dance really comes from Katak northern Indian genre, but they've
done a really good job of popularizing dance among Indians
among I asked for us. So nowadays everyone, like all
my students at Hunter know about Bollywood and they're excited
about it because they know that, you know, it's very entertaining.
(13:25):
So bally pop exercise dance is another genre that has
become really popular so audience members and helped efficionadoskin buy
tickets for that workshop as well.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
There is much more about the festival at iaact Us
and the Indo American Arts Council also features. In addition
to dance, film, literature and music, there's all kinds of
information on the website as well. Deephiku Strategy is the
festival director of this event that starts just over a
week away on September eighteenth. Thank you for being on
(13:56):
Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Thank you so much, Nina. This was.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our show,
or want to share it. Visit our website for downloads
and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm dot com.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. Located in New York,
the Indo American Arts Council is a not for profit
arts organization passionately dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an
awareness of arts and artists of Asian Indian heritage. From
September eighteenth to twenty first, the Indo American Arts Council
presents the Erasing Borders Dance Festival, featuring classical bands from India.
(00:36):
Our guest is Deepshika Chatterjee. Festival Director Dipshaka Chatterjee. Thank
you for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thank you, Nina.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Dipsuka Chatterjee is a tenured faculty member of Theatre at
Hunter College and has a PhD in Theater and Performance
from Cuny Graduate Center. Since twenty seventeen, she has also
served as the dance director for the Erasing Borders Dance Festival.
You can find out more, including details on tickets, at
i AAC dot us. Why is it called the Erasing
(01:04):
Borders Dance Festival?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Oh, that's a great question, Nina. I think my predecessors
and one of the curators who's also still with our
festival is she and another esteemed dance curator, Rajikapuri, they
thought of this name. I want to say fifteen years
before I stepped in, and at the time there was
(01:27):
a lot of diaspora Indians who were practicing Indian dance.
So even though we say Indian dance, it's being performed
all over the world, and it's being performed by people
of Indian heritage, people of second generation Indians. Now more
and more non Indians who do not have the Indian
(01:50):
heritage and the lineage, but respect that practice and the
performance tradition and hence the dance. John Really, genres really
are beyond the borders.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's very interesting. Indian dance I know very little about,
but the provenance of Indian dance and culture goes back
a long way and it's such a huge part of
the culture. Can you talk a little bit about that.
We don't have the same thing in the US.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, if you don't have the same thing in the US.
But interestingly, the way Indian dance, the provenance of Indian
dance is similar to a lot of the provenance of
a lot of dance traditions, music traditions around the world.
So we actually see some of that in India, in Asia.
I was in Indonesia for example last year. Indonesia has
(02:40):
a long history of this kind of practice. In African traditions,
there are these kinds of practices. So a lot of
Indian dance were called temple dances, and they were performed
as a dedication to temple deities, as entertainment for the public,
(03:00):
as storytelling methods of the stories of the gods and
the kings and the people who were important and necessary
to learn or know about. So that was a lot
of Indian dance, I want to say, in fifteen sixteenth century,
and a lot of that even now. Actually some of
my research is from Assam and some of the dances
(03:23):
are still done in temples and the monks, the in
monasteries practiced the dances. Hathria dance is one example of
that from Assam region of India. So a lot of
that tradition came through and it comes from a very
old text called the Nadia Shastra, which is over two
thousand years old, almost as old as any of the
(03:45):
Greek literature around the same time, and Nadishastra mentions a
couple of the dance traditions and they have been carried
over centuries in temple spaces as dedication, ceremonies and as entertainment.
There were some changes that happened in this space with
British colonization of India. And we know of the British colonization,
(04:09):
but colonization of different different European countries were happening in
India at the same time. There was the Portuguese, there
was French. The British obviously had the biggest presence, and
India start independence from the British in nineteen forty seven.
But the dance traditions really and like one of the
northern Indian dance traditions Kathha, that's actually even practice in
(04:31):
Pakistan regions of the region, and there are some artists
who still practice Gthhab in Pakistan. And similarly, some of
the southern traditions actually changed and morphed and moved from India.
Sri Lanka minmar as I said mentioned Indonesia, Thailand, so
(04:52):
you'll see a lot of these connections across the region.
For the dance traditions and the ritualist ritual practices nineteen
forty seven. A lot of that has separated from the
ritual practice and is mostly performed in sort of secular,
democratic kind of spaces, so theaters and you know, dance schools.
(05:14):
But even now, even now a lot of dance schools
and dance teachers do teach their students to make an
offering or make you know, have an altar on the
stage because they are considered kind of you know, sacred
in a way. However, a lot of our lot of
dancers are also going beyond those traditions and practicing in
(05:35):
very modern ways. So we'll have two dance companies this year,
Thresh Dance and Rovaco Dance, who are creating new vocabularies,
you know, and they have a body of work that
they've built Thresh for example, pretty vas so they even
of Thresh Dance, she has a body of work for
over ten years now in creating new vocabularies out of
(05:57):
Indian dance.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We're speaking with deep Shiga Chattergy. She is festival director
of the Erasing Borders Dance Festival from September eighteenth to
twenty first hosted by the Indo American Arts Council. It
features classical dance from India. You can find out more
at IAAC dot us. You're listening to get connected on
one six point seven light FM. I'mina del Rio. Let's
(06:18):
talk about the performances. You actually open with a lecture
at Lincoln Center at the New York Library for the
Performing Arts on September eighteenth. Briefly, what's that about?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
NYPL has done a fantastic job of creating this space
for disseminating about Indian dance. They've done demonstrations, they have
shown how what is the heritage of Indian dance and
I NYPL also has a beautiful Indian dance archive in
the Jerome Robins Dance Division, So they're the ones who
host that part of the FESTIVALIA.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The performance is the main performances are on the evenings
of September twentieth and twenty first at a Ley Citygroup Theater.
It's right there at the corner of West forty fourth
and ninth Avenue. Can you talk about themers.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, we're so excited. The first night we have preadi
Shni Govin. She's the marquee performer. She's coming in from
India for the festival, and then we have a whole
series of dancers who are performing ODC Dance Trina Sarkar,
we have Chitrish Dance Company performing Katak. They are out
(07:22):
of California. And we have a dance school also, Dejeli
Dance School from New Jersey. So we have been inviting
dance schools who are part and parcel of the American
fabric now and they usually do a sort of welcome
piece every year. And similarly on Sunday. Our Sunday lineup
is I think tradition kind of also meeting modern modernism.
(07:47):
So we have our anchor performers, Rama vaid Nathan also
coming from India with her daughters Sanidhi and Dakshina, and
alongside we will have Kalaniti Dance Group. Actually Kalanity Dance
Group is on Saturday. I got that mixed up. And
we have Pritty Vasudevin's group, We have Thresh Dance. We
(08:10):
have Rovaco Dance who are both experimenting and kind of
looking at Indian dance and modern through modern lens. And
then we have an ODC Welcoming group ODC Dance Company
based out of New Jersey. So we have an exciting lineup,
and then we have Kuchapuri performer, which is also one
of the classical traditions from India. Pranam Miyasuri is performing
(08:31):
that and she's coming in from Texas to perform. So
we really have performers from all over the country coming
together in New York.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You also have, you know, with Indian dance, you can
as you spoke, you can pull from so many different areas.
What did you want to present with this year's festival?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Oh my god, that's such a difficult question. We had
over two hundred applications this year and we are only
able to choose such a small number of artists. So
thank you to all the artists who apply, and we
love everyone. It's limited space, so we can't have everyone
we you know, really we had over fifty applications that
we were like wowed by, but it's really hard to
(09:09):
make this selection. Odic was not a genre we had
presented a lot, so we really wanted to include odic.
Cuthah Dance Company, a Jit thrish Das Dance Company, fabulous group.
They actually just finished tours in India also and they
will be performing with one of the musicians from New York,
(09:31):
so they'll have live music in the performance. Also, they
are fabulous, So we really try to do multiple genres
so that people audience who's coming in get a sense of,
you know, the variety and the richness of Indian dance landscape.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
You are a professor of theater with a deep background
in costume design. How does your design experience influence your
approach to the festival.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Oh, that's a great question. I actually got involved with
the festival because of my re search on costumes and
masks in Indian dance. So there was a genre Purulia
Cho and it's my big desire to present Chow. We
have not been able to present it yet in India.
I was doing that research in twenty fifteen, between twenty
(10:15):
thirteen and twenty fifteen and ut senior curator and she
knew about that work I was doing, so she invited
me as a curator because I was learning about the
dance and then learning about the costumes. So Indian dance
in the audience will see each of the genres have
a specific costume and artists work, you know, change costumes,
but they kind of have an existing vocabulary and they
(10:39):
tweak within that vocabulary. You know, with color, with shape, form,
but some of the formalization of Indian dance that has
happened in post colonial India has happened in costume aspect
of the dances. So you know, I enjoy those visual
design aspects. And you know, there are other curators like
(11:00):
Kuta as a dance scholar and dancer herself. There is
Shrinidi Ragawan Shuti Mohan who are also dance practitioners and teachers.
And then pray Apotel jin Won are kata practitioners and
have their own dance schools. Jin actually is Korean but
lived in India for fifteen years and learned Kathak the
(11:22):
dance as well as tabla the percussion. So our curatorial
team is bringing in multiple perspectives into the process. And
the Pashasur who's a graduate from UTA's classes at Barnard
College and has grown up in the US as a
dance practitioner of Kathak, so each of us are bringing
a different perspective into our selection process.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
The Indo American Arts Council presents the Erasing Borders Dance
Festival from September eighteenth to twenty first, featuring dance from
India can you talk a little bit about sort of
ticket price ranges and how to get tickets.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
We have a good problem this year. Our Saturday tickets
sold out. We might open up a few number of tickets,
but tickets range from thirty dollars to fifty five dollars
depending on you know, the rows and et cetera arrangement.
And they're on event right, so audience members who are
excited can go look in event right for their Raising
(12:19):
Border Stance Festival and purchase tickets there. We also have
two great workshops. Rama bay D Nathan, who's coming in
from India as a bath Nati practitioner, is teaching a
fantastic workshop balance of the body and you know how
to balance left and right, have a balance upper body
lower body. Her workshop is called Tula or the Balance,
(12:40):
and I encouraged answers to go and buy tickets for
the workshop. It's a two hour workshop on Saturday, so
it'll be it'll be really exciting. And there is a
Bollywood exercise workshop on Sunday that will be added soon.
We're working on it. So that's I think, you know,
as an exercise form. Ballllyywood has done a really great
(13:01):
job of Bollywood the film genre to the vocabulary in Bollywood,
dance really comes from Katak northern Indian genre, but they've
done a really good job of popularizing dance among Indians
among I asked for us. So nowadays everyone, like all
my students at Hunter know about Bollywood and they're excited
about it because they know that, you know, it's very entertaining.
(13:25):
So bally pop exercise dance is another genre that has
become really popular so audience members and helped efficionadoskin buy
tickets for that workshop as well.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
There is much more about the festival at iaact Us
and the Indo American Arts Council also features. In addition
to dance, film, literature and music, there's all kinds of
information on the website as well. Deephiku Strategy is the
festival director of this event that starts just over a
week away on September eighteenth. Thank you for being on
(13:56):
Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Thank you so much, Nina. This was.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our show,
or want to share it. Visit our website for downloads
and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm dot com.
Thanks for listening.
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