collective
natya dance collective
We are a group of rigorously trained dancers with extensive performance experience who meet to co-produce new work that invigorates traditional Bharatnatyam vocabularies for our local communities. Originating in Open Studio sessions that have been ongoing since 2015, NATyA Dance Collective now works continuously to produce and present new work that inspires our heart and bodies, and takes conceptual and choreographic risks. In 2018, we premiered Trishul: Dancing Trident in Cambridge and Natick, and were featured at the Cambridge River Festival's Interactive Dance Stage. In 2019, we premiered Samsara: Dancing the Everyday in Cambridge. Our most recent work, growing out of our experience of grief and healing during the pandemic, Radical Love: A Collective Movement was presented at the Dance Complex in January 2024 after over a dozen local performances that we used to develop the program.
Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan
(Artistic Director) founded NATyA in 2015 after three decades of training and performance. A lifelong diasporic dancer, she has trained continuously with prominent Bharatanatyam teachers in the U.S. and India since age 5, performed in professional solo and group productions all over the United States and South Africa. For more details, please see the contact page.
Usha Narayana
joined natya in 2016 after learning from Sridevi Thirumalai and Jothi Raghavan as a young a girl for many years. She lives in Sherborn, MA with her family. In her professional life, she is Managing Director of Digital Marketing at Bank of America.
Aditi Subramaniam
began her dance training under Rekha Chowdary in both Bharatanatyam and Indian folk dance at the age of four. She continued classical training under Chitra Chandrashekar and Manjari Chandrashekar, daughters of Guru C.V. Chandrashekar before joining Leela Samson. She has performed with ‘Spanda’, Leela Samson’s performance troupe, throughout India and in the USA.
Dr. Gowri Vijayakumar
started learning Bharatanatyam as a child in Andover from Purnima Gururaja. She pursued further training under Guru Narmada (Bangalore, India); the Dhananjayans, and Katherine Kunhiraman. As an adult, she continued training with Gururaja in Bangalore, India. She has performed in the productions “Belaku Kanda Balakaru” and “Shivotsavam,” with the Dhananjayans in “Satyam Sivam Sundaram,” and in community performances with Katherine Kunhiraman’s Kalanjali Dance School.
Kavya Prasad
started learning Bharatanatyam at the age of 7 under the tutelage of Smt. Kamakshi Jayaraman at Shivanjali School of Dance and later under the guidance of Smt. Lavanya Sankar at Abhayasa Academy, Coimbatore. She has performed in various distinguished forums such as the Namami Gange Anthem, a Government of India Project. She continues to actively perform in India.
Arya Shekar
began her dance training under Guru Sridevi Thirumalai in Massachusetts and pursued advanced training under Guru Rhadha in Chennai, India. She has performed extensively for a wide range of audiences in the US, Spain and India, including a tour of 15 US cities in Guru Rhadha’s production “Siva Sakti” at the age of 12. She is an international lawyer and dog mom to a Pomsky named Diablo.
