Vasant Pallavi– The word “Pallavi” is derived from the Sanskrit word pallava, which means the bud of a leaf, or the shoots of a tree, which are very tender. As a small seed grows gradually into a large tree, in Pallavi, a tune is sung in a particular raga and it develops gradually into different varieties. Vasant Pallavi celebrates the …
Title of piece: Kalyan Pallavi Original choreographer: Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Music: Balakrishna Das (for dancer Priyambada Mohanty in 1959) I jumped on an opportunity to perform a duet of Kalyan Pallavi with Manasi at the Livermore temple festival. It was such a treat to rehearse and learn some of the graceful movements with Manasi who …
Title of piece: Kalyan Pallavi Original choreographer: Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Music: Balakrishna Das (for dancer Priyambada Mohanty in 1959) Merely a handful of people around the world are familiar with this choreography as evidenced by the scarcity of archived material for Kalyaan Pallavi in Odissi. My teacher, Guru Vishnu Tattva Das conducted a 2 days intensive …
In early 2017, with only my doctoral thesis to focus on at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and no teaching commitments at Berkeley campus, I realized I could put my spare time to good use (and keep myself sane). And that was when I came across an opportunity to be part of an outreach …
During my first year in graduate school, a former graduate student from the lab was visiting us one evening. Before taking off for the day, he grabbed a pen, scribbled something on a set of post it notes and stuck them all over my desk. The notes were his musings inspired by grad school, baseball and Oakland where …
GradSlam is an annual contest in which master’s and Ph.D. students across University of California campuses – in disciplines ranging from hard sciences to humanities – compete to sum up their research for a general audience under three minutes. My video entry from round 1 was selected and I was shortlisted among the top 10 …
In early 2016, the following announcement from the Berkeley Graduate Division caught my eye: “Are you a doctoral or master’s student engaged in interesting research? Would you like to hone your presentation skills to better explain your work? The first step in the multi-phase competition is to submit your three-minute video, using the Grad Slam guidelines. …
Ethnic Dance Festival in San Francisco is an annual cultural event that has been successfully running for close to four decades. It is an occasion to celebrate the rich cultural diversity of the Bay Area in one of the grandest settings in San Francisco—the Palace of Fine Arts. Auditions for the summer 2017 event took …
Four of us from Odissi Vilas performed Mohana Pallavi at the Shirdi Sai Parivar venue in Milpitas, CA in 2016. The venue was intimate, the organizers were extremely cordial and the audience members were receptive. Overall it was a wonderful experience and I look forward to the next opportunity to perform in this beautiful space …