Bharatanatyam | Dancing for the Gods
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Preeti Vasudevan Dancer / Choreographer

I was born in Madras (now Chennai) in the south of India in 1973. I must have shown an appetite for movement very early because my parents started taking me to Bharatanatyam classes from the age of four! As I got a bit older, I was fortunate to have some incredible teachers: first the world-famous guru U.S. Krishna Rao and then V.P. Dhananjayan and his wife Shanta Dhananjayan.

In 1995, I was awarded a one-year scholarship to study and teach dance in Japan. This was a life-changing experience for me, opening my eyes to entirely different ways of moving and thinking about movement. While continuing to perform and teach Bharatanatyam, I began a deep and serious study of a wide range of dance and theatre forms, both Western and Eastern. To continue this research, in 2001 I moved to London to study for a Master’s degree at Laban, the pre-eminent school for dance studies. Inspired by my study at Laban, and by many other things I discovered and enjoyed in London, in 2004 I founded my company, Thresh. The company is dedicated to performance and education – and Dancing for the Gods is a result of that passion! You could say that this project is a chance for me to bring all the perspectives I have learned over the last twenty years back into the study of my first love: Bharatanatyam.

To do full justice to this project, I realised I needed to go ‘back to the source’, so I moved with my husband, Bruno Kavanagh, back to Chennai (which is the ‘cultural capital’ of south India). We worked on Dancing for the Gods together for the better part of two years – as well as well as taking time to enjoy the sights and sounds of that extraordinary country...India! In May 2008 we came back to New York where Thresh regularly performs my contemporary dance-theater works, as well as conducting workshops, seminars and numerous education-related projects. If you’d like to see some of our new works, please visit Thresh online at www.threshdance.org.

When not dancing, I enjoy cooking, tennis, going to museums and watching the sunset over the Hudson river from our apartment window. Like many Indian people (and like my English husband) I am also a passionate cricket fan!

Please feel free to contact me with any questions / suggestions / thoughts. I’d be delighted to hear from you – write to me at preeti@threshdance.org
 
   
Preeti Vasudevan
 
Bruno Kavanagh
 
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