Viji Rao

Viji will facilitate Indian classical dance and music workshops to more than 50 students over the course of three days. The participants will range in age, race, and ethnic cultural backgrounds and will include 20 professional dancers. Members of the community will come together and learn the details and technique of the art form, and collaborate to create new, original work. By performing and teaching classical Indian dance – particularly Bharatanatyam – Viji aims to preserve and explore a new future for this dance style that connects to modern, culturally and socially relevant themes. 

Viji has been studying Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form, since she was three years old.  In addition to being a dancer, Viji works as a historian and teacher, with the goal of preserving and presenting this ancient dance form.  She promotes cross-cultural awareness through teaching, workshops, and demonstrations in local schools, community centers, as well as colleges and universities. Through Viji’s original work, which she creates with her company Three Aksha, and collaborations with other local artists, she incorporates contemporary, socially relevant themes, from dowry practices to war veterans.  Viji’s role as practitioner is to educate the diverse community she is a part of in Pennsylvania about the need and necessity for an art form that is a component of exploring and sharing personal identity, emotions and cultural awareness. Her work as choreographer is one way second-generation Indians and others will be able to connect to their roots in a new place and time.

Viji will produce a dance performance that will explore issues of domestic abuse of Indian women related to dowry practices both in India and among Indian immigrant communities. Viji's decade of experience as a choreographer and dancer in productions by Indian, American, Canadian and British dance and theatre companies has enabled her to develop this project. To best convey the cultural meaning of the piece, the project will be performed using Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form.