Our students are excited for another opportunity to learn from the amazing creative talent Raka Maitra, founder and artistic director of Chowk Productions in Singapore. For our thirtieth anniversary in 2023, we were fortunate to have her choreograph and teach a segment of our show Isaya, and she returns this year with another original piece to share with us.

Maitra is a dynamic performer and choreographer, with many well-received performances to her name. She has drawn on the traditions of Odissi and Chhau to develop her own contemporary dance language and created a significant body of original work that is thematically and visually diverse yet always bears her style.

She established her company Chowk in Singapore with a bold voice and a keen sense of origin and place. Her work has been commissioned by and presented at Singapore’s Esplanade, Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, Melkweg in Amsterdam, Les Hivernales in Avignon, Tasmania, 10 days in the island at Tasmania, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., among other venues.

Starting in the middle of June, Maitra will be working with students daily to convey an excerpt of her cerebral original work Pallavi in Time, which combines her strong interest in Odissi vocabulary with her one-of-a-kind contemporary vision.

Students will glimpse this unique perspective and discover new layers to the movements they have been studying for years, while remaining immersed in the foundations of our primary classical discipline here at Mayur. We are proud to be able to provide this occasion for learning and exchanging ideas, and honored to be working with Maitra again!

Come see the result at our June 29th, 2024 production:  Trini Sutra

cover photo: Anya