Community Outreach
Community engagement and making kathak dance’s universality accessible for all to experience is one of Rachna Nivas’ fundamental values as an artist. While performance is an important and thrilling platform for communion of the art, interactive residencies give an opportunity for deeper experience, education, and human exchange for both the participants and the artist. They give a chance to connect to youth, artists of different genres, and people of all walks of life.
Rachna has participated in residencies, community elevating projects, workshops, and lecture demonstrations across the U.S. and in India in such places as New Light Foundation in the red-light district of Kolkata, India working with children of sex-workers, Krupferberg Center for the Arts in Queens as part of the Mosaic Project, Young Audiences for arts education, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, North Carolina State Live, Treme Center of New Orleans, Conservatory of Arts in Miami, Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, LA Tap Fest at Debbie Allen Dance Academy, National Center for Kathak Dance in New Delhi, and many more.
Residencies
Rachna also regularly gives talks and lectures on a multitude of topics like the history of kathak and Indian classical art from social and political contexts, maintaining and evolving tradition in a changing world, the guru-shishya parampara (guru-disciple tradition) in modern times, the erasure and invisibility of women in Indian classical dance, the intersection of kinesiology, emotionality, and spirituality in Indian classical dance, the rich history and influence of her lineage in America (often coined “California Gharana), the interconnectedness and higher consciousness achieved through Indian classical art, and many more.
