natya is a sanskrit word that refers to the theater arts as a whole: dance, music, poetry, costume, storytelling, and staging.

natya also refers to the emotive and technical whole of dance expression.

Through teaching and ensemble performance, natya dance promotes a holistic understanding of Bharatanatyam, including rasa for the arts, strong technique, and a passion for telling powerful stories to any audience that is willing to hear them. Thus, with your participation, NATyA is building a local arts community that moves bodies and minds. NATyA believes that being in motion not only brings us closer to Indian cultural heritages, but to our true human selves. During classes for 4-year-olds at the Hollow Reed School in Jamaica Plain, MA, a parent commented, "This opens up a beautiful door for her." NATyA Dance hopes to open that door for everyone, wherever we might be in our artistic journeys.

Classes:

natya dance offers classes for children and adults, taught by Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan.

We engage young children by cultivating rasa for the arts. When we open our fingers in the alapadma mudra, and treat that open hand as an opening flower, if you invite a child to share it, that child will lean forward to smell and share the fragrance. With very young children, there is a unique opportunity to encourage them to continue to engage with that flower, feel that essence, and open their imaginations wide to tell their stories. Technical training, conditioning of the body and mind, discipline, and commitment to the arts are only possible if we all feel that magic right at the beginning.

With engage adults with customized instruction that similarly foregrounds strong technical foundations, body conditioning, and storytelling. We create opportunities to get adult dancers on stage whenever possible and push adult dancers to experience the full joy and sense of belonging that Bharatanatyam can create.

Performance:

Since 2015, natya has been building a collaborative group of rigorously trained Bharatanatyam dancers, now called natya dance collective. Together, we innovate new directions in a non-hierarchical, open environment, and strengthen our practice of the art. natya dance collective is based on the idea that we each have something to contribute, and we each have something to learn. Recently, we have also had natya students participating in public performances and local competitions.

Follow us on Instagram @natyadance for the latest updates on our performances and projects. We specialize in interactive performances for families, featuring dances from our classical repertoire as well as creative works that combine Bharatanatyam with English narrative, world music, and poetry to reach diverse audiences.

Photos: purpleganesh | www.purpleganesh.com