Community Curator Night

WADE EVANS

Wade Evans is a lifelong musician and multi- instrumentalist from Paradise, Utah. Wade has travelled the world in search of The Sound– a journey which has led him to over 40 countries around the world, and has put dozens of instruments into his hands. He began his training on the sitar in 2003, when he became a disciple of Padma Shree Pt. Shivnath Mishra in Varanasi, India. In addition to his passion for Hindustani Classical Music, Wade also loves to play Turkish/ Ottoman-era art music on the oud, the music of JS Bach on the mandolin and classical guitar, as well as various other styles of folk and traditional music

DEBANJAN BHATTACHARYA

Debanjan Bhattacharya is a disciple of Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri. Debanjan started learning Tabla in Kolkata, India, at a very young age with the support and encouragement of his parents. His initial training in Tabla was nurtured by his grandfather Late Sri Damarupani Bhattacharya and his uncle Sri Sudipto Bhattacharya. Later, he also studied with the Late Sri Ratan Ghatak who was a senior disciple of Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri. Debanjan performs regularly with instrumentalists, vocalists, and dancers. He has also played solos and given lectures on Tabla and Indian musical tradition at the University of Connecticut, Utah State University, Brigham Young University, and Utah Valley University among others. Besides playing with Hindustani classical musicians, Debanjan also collaborates with Kathak, Bharatanatyam, and also musicians and dancers of various other genres.While he holds a career as a professor of Statistics, Debanjan remains busy with performing and teaching Tabla and continues to pursue his studies of music under the tutelage and blessings of his illustrious Guru Sri Swapan Chaudhuri.

KRITHIGA MOHAN

Krithiga is a trained Carnatic Vocalist and has been singing since the age of 7. She has learnt from multiple Gurus, primarily under Smt. Uma Ramachandran for over 10 years. As a child, she has participated and won at various musical shows on TV and Radio. She has performed at 800+ light music shows over 10 years and was a lead singer in one of the top orchestras in India.  She is a part of Utah based music band called Desibels and performs at local community events. Krithiga is a mother of two kids and works for a leading Investment Bank as Operations Senior Vice President.

SARVESH SRIRAM

Sarvesh Sriram has been playing Mridangam since the age of 5. He is very fortunate to have been taught by 3 gurus from the same lineage of the Mridangam Vidwan Kumbakonam Shri M. Rajappa Iyer. He has also received vocal training from Smt. Nirmala Rajashekar, MN USA. He completed his Mridangam Arangetram last year, at Vani Mahal in Chennai India. Sarvesh has won several prizes, recently winning the first prize in the Radha Govind Dham’s Vaidya Manjari in Texas, USA.

BHARATANATYAM

Bharatanatyam is a classical Indian genre of dance that originates from the South of India. Performed all over the world today, it is universally recognized as a dance form that is at once geometric and graceful, light as well as grounded. The pure technique of Bharatanatyam is defined by the highly evolved classical rhythm traditions of South India. Due to its sophisticated narrative vocabulary, Bharatanatyam is also ideally suited to complex story telling. It is this shared tradition of the Indian dance forms as an unparalleled means of communication that places them at the center of the stage art forms of the world.

Dancers from NNDC: Jyothsna Sainath, Shrinivasan Raghuraman, Divya Rajashekharan Iyer, Shraddha Ramesh, Varshinee Devanand

NITYA NRITYA DANCE COMPANY (https://nitya-nritya-dance.teachable.com/)

Nitya Nritya Dance Company (NNDC) is an Utah based Bharatanatyam performing and training company. It was started by Jyothsna Sainath (Jyothsnasainath.com) in 2014. Apart from being a performing company, it is also Utah’s premiere Bharatanatyam academy for young and/or new dancers, with a thoughtful pedagogy that imparts Bharatanatyam in a manner that is sustainable and relevant to students of dance that enables a long run engagement with the art form

JYOTHSNA SAINATH

Jyothsna is a Bharatanatyam dance artist based in Salt Lake City, UT. She is the artistic director of the NNDC and the President of the Nitya Nritya Foundation. Nitya Nritya Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to bringing the rich diversity of Indian classical arts to audiences in the Salt Lake valley. 

In her formative years Jyothsna trained rigorously in Bharatanatyam technique and performance with established Gurus, well into her twenties in Bengaluru; a traditional center for its practice. She completed a Masters in Performing Arts from Bengaluru University, with an emphasis in Bharatanatyam. 

On moving to the US, Jyothsna has performed widely within the US and has conducted Bharatanatyam workshops and Master classes at various educational institutions of all levels in the Salt Lake valley and has been a guest choreographer at the Department of Dance, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Most recently, Jyothsna was awarded Individual Artist Career Empowerment Grants by the Salt Lake City Arts Council in 2022 and 2023 in the Tier I category to undertake arts projects in the valley. She also received an Artist Scholarship from Utah Division of Arts and Museums to build multi-media content for a solo production in 2022.

STORY-TELLING WORKSHOP

Story-telling is a method of cultural transmission fundamental to all human-kind. The role of art as a medium for storytelling is as ancient as communication itself.  Given the historical role of the Indian classical arts as a means of story-telling & entertainment, Indian genres of dance have an evolved lexicon for this purpose. The goal of this workshop is to empower participants of all ages to narrate stories through the experience of aesthetic movement.