(cheerful music) - Chitrakaavya Dance explores, highlights and investigates Indian classical dance and conceptualizes movement as a means of visual poetry.

Artistic Director Srilatha Singh is here to tell us about an upcoming performance.

Welcome Srilatha, why don't you tell us first about the dance company as an organization?

- Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate the opportunity.

Chitrakaavya Dance has been for about 10 years now in the Salt Lake Valley conceptualizing Indian classical dance forms as a means of communicating narrative storytelling amongst lyrical landscapes, lyrical soundscapes, and it really thinks of movement as poetry.

We have been focusing on Bharatanatyam, which is a South Indian classical dance form.

It's about two millennia old and we've been bringing in master artists for again, about 10 years.

These are usually people who've spent their lifetimes pursuing these art classical dance forms, and they represent the very best of the traditions.

And it's good for those who are learning out here to see that example.

- And you're bringing someone very renowned in to perform.

Tell us about her.

- So we are bringing in Bijayini Satpathy.

She is pretty much, I think, the best Indian classical dance artist that perhaps we've seen in a century.

She's the kind, the likes of whom are revered, I would say, and followed by classical dance artists all over the world, not just India, but you know, Mark Morris, who's a dance, modern dance company, he, Mikhail Baryshnikov, these are the people who have fettered and you know, sort of given her her acclaim.

And most recently last year, she was awarded the Dance Magazine Award for Career Achievement in Dance.

And I just wanted to say she's the first Indian classical artist to receive that award.

- Wonderful, and now people can see her.

Anyway, thank you so much for being here and thank you for bringing her.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

- And if you'd like to know about the upcoming performance, it is Chitrakaavya Dance.

Her name is Bijayini Satpathy.

She's doing Abhipsaa- A Seeking, March 30th at 6 o'clock in the Leona Wagner Black Box Theater, one not to miss.

If you want to know more, go to chitrakaavyadance.org.

That's chitrakaavyadance.org.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching Contact.

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