Attakkalari India Biennial 2013

Aguibou Bougobali

Aguibou Bougobali Sanou - born in a large family of artists living in Burkina Faso - started African and modern dance at a young age. At the end of his computer-based administration and communication studies, he learned theatre based on the techniques of Jacques Lecoq with Luca GM Fusi (Italy) and capoeira with Mestre Paulo Boa Vida (Brazil). In 2005, he took in his first contemporary dance workshop with choreographers and dancers Salia Sanou and Ousseni Sako (Salia ni Seydou Dance Company). He also participated in many other contemporary dance workshops with international choreographers such as Martin Gravitz (USA-France), Regine Chopinot (France), Thierry de Mey (France), Taesang Lee, Lee-K (South Korea), Vincent Mantsoe (South Africa), Sidi Graoui (France) Carolyn Carlson (Atelier de Paris, France), Mark Tompkins (USA-France), Norbert Senou (Benin-France), Musa H. (South Africa) and Merlin Nyakam (Cameroun-France) Sabine Samba (Compagnie GESTUELLE, France) Hind Benalh (Compagnie Fleur d'orange, Morocco).

In addition to dancing, he also has a career in film with 5 African long feature movies, including a lead role in Dani Kouyate's Ouaga-Saga and numerous commercials. Sanou teaches creative dance, African dance and capoeira in his native city of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.

Airi Suzuki

Airi Suzuki was born in Tokyo, Japan. She started dancing at the age of 15. She moved to the United States of America and studied modern dance and ballet at Peri Dance Center and Limon Institute in New York. In 2008, she lived in Berlin, Germany, where she worked as a freelance artist and focused on her own creations and collaborations with other artists. Since 2009, she works with Perrine Valli in Tokyo and Paris, and has been performing at several major festivals in Europe, such as Dansfabrik Brest / Dance Festival in Nyon. In 2011, her solo work was selected to perform at a choreography competition, Yokohama Dance CollectionEX, Japan. She was also selected as Reebok global campaign girl in 2011. Suzuki works as a dancer, choreographer, Pilates teacher and model.

Anoushka Kurien

Anoushka Kurien is a dancer and choreographer. She has trained and performed in Europe and Asia with the Padmini Chettur Dance Company since 2003. In 2010-11, through a JN Tata Scholarship, she studied at Trinity Laban, London where she first explored the beginnings of Restricted View. In 2011, her work All this for nothing except for dance., a collaboration with two artists from Brazil and South Africa was created and presented at the Arts Alive Festival in Johannesburg. She lives and works in Chennai, India.

Choy Ka Fai

Choy Ka Fai is an artist, performance maker and speculative designer. He is inspired by the histories and theorisations that together contain the uncertainties of the future. His research springs from a desire to understand the conditioning of the human body, its intangible memories and the forces shaping its expressions. These factors converge into complex articulations at the intersection of art, design and technology. Ka Fai graduated in Design Interaction from the Royal College Of Art London, under a National Arts Council Singapore Overseas Scholarship, and was conferred the Singapore Young Artist Award in 2010. He has participated in major art festivals worldwide including the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale (2008), Festival Tokyo (2011) and the Singapore Arts Festival (2012).

Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy

Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy, a contemporary performing artiste from Bangalore, India, has been engaged in artistic work as a performer, creator and teacher since for the past 12 years. He has trained and worked with dance companies like Attakkalari's Repertory Dance Company in India, Bodhi Project in Austria, Danshuisstationzuid in Netherlands, and Hausgemacht in Germany, and completed a post graduate diploma in choreography at S.E.A.D in Austria in 2008. His dance creations have been showcased in venues in India and Europe.

Inbal Oshman

Since 2006, Inbal Oshman has created several dance works, which were performed in major dance festivals in Israel and in Europe, among them: Yellow Bride (2012), a solo based on the Azerbaijani folk song "Sari Gelin", which premiered in TanzWoche Dresden, Germany, Fitting Room (2010), a trio for two dancers and a sewer, which were performed in Israel, Germany and Portugal, Gradation (2008), a site-specific dance work, Rising Down (2007), a site-specific dance work, One on One (2006), a collaboration with the video artist Gay Itzchaky and Border Lines (2006). Oshman is a graduate of the Philosophy and History Department of Tel-Aviv University.

Isak Immanuel

Isak Immanuel is an interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and choreographer working internationally. He is artistic director of the performance/exhibition series, Tableau Stations. His recent work has been presented at Fabrica-Europa in Italy, Dock11 in Berlin, CESTA in the Czech Republic, as a fellowship recipient from the Japan-US Friendship Commission and NEA in Japan, at the Taipei Artist Village and HweiLan International Artists Workshop in Taiwan, and at New Langton Arts, CounterPULSE and Djerassi in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal is an Australian-Javanese contemporary dancer, choreographer and creative collaborator passionate about body, voice and light connections with nature and ritual performance. She has a Masters of Choreography High Distinction from VCA Melbourne University (2010) and a Bachelor of Dance Honours from NWSA Florida University (2000). Two decades of extensive international dance art training, professional performance experience and intercultural exchange influence her choreographic explorations of complex contrasts like presence-absence, tradition-modernity, acoustic-electronic and East-West.

Kristina Soetorp

Kristina Soetorp has her Bachelor in Arts in contemporary dance from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, 2006. She has worked with choreographer Ina Christel Johannessen for five years in several productions, and with choreographers and companies such as Wee Company, Impure Company, Kreutzerkompani, Therese Markhus and Dans Design. In 2006, she with her colleague Ida Wigdel founded the dance company, The Line where she works as choreographer and performer. The company has produced several works and the much-acclaimed dance movie, BEyond. Later this year, in April, the company will premiere a new work at Dansens Hus, in Oslo.

Leandro Kees

Leandro Kees studied film and theatre in Argentina and dance at the Folkwang University in Germany. He took part in dance works created by choreographers Susanne Linke, Samir Akika, Mark Siezcarek, Ben Riepe and others. Between 2008 and 2009, he was invited to work as choreographer and dancer for the Folkwang Tanzstudio, which was under artistic direction of Rodolpho Leoni and Pina Bausch. In 2010, he was selected for the Production Grant 2010 by Tanzplan Dresden to create a work co-produced by The Sempler Oper, Hellerau and the Palucca Dance School. In 2010 and 2012, he was invited as a guest choreographer for the Departments of Dance and Physical Theatre at the Folkwang University. Between 2007 and 2012, he has worked a guest choreographer in Germany, Argentina, Mexico and the United Kingdom. As a dance teacher, he has worked for several institutions and companies such as Neuer Tanz (Germany), Lia Rodriguez (Brazil), Stadttheater St. Gallen (Switzerland), and Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlan (Mexico) and others.

Paula Rechtman

Originally from Mexico, Paula Rechtman started her professional career in 2001 dancing with Foramen M. Ballet. She went on to study contemporary dance for her Bachelors and Masters in Arts at The Place - London Contemporary Dance School. She has danced with various companies in the United Kingdom and Mexico including the Mexican National Company for Contemporary Dance - CEPRODAC-CONACULTA/INBA - between 2011 to 2012. As choreographer, Rechtman has presented work in Mexico, United States of America, the United Kingdom and Croatia. Since 2008, she has been collaborating with Colectivo PAUSA en movimiento.

Rianto

Rianto has mastered technique of Javanese traditional dance with a special focus on Banyumas style studying more the male and female characters and movement vocabularies. He has graduated from STSI Surakarta in 2000-2004 from the dance and choreography program. Rianto has also learned traditional dance in Mangkunegaran style at the Pura Mangkunegaran Palace. In early 2006, he moved to Tokyo and established the Dewandaru Dance Company.

Santhosh VS

Santhosh VS was trained in yoga at the Trichur Yoga Association under Gopinath Edakkunni, a Diploma in Movement Arts and Mixed Media from Attakkalari and a post graduate in co-operation and business management. He has been a member of Attakkalari's Repertory Dance Company for six years and performed in their full-length productions Transavatar, For Pina and MeiDhwani. His first choreographic work, Padheyam, was premiered at the Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg, Sweden and was also performed at the Greenwich Dance Agency, Dance Southwest/Pavilion Dance in the United Kingdom, Attakkalari India Biennial Festival 2011 and in Germany at tanzhaus NRW.

Surjit Nongmeikapam

Surjit Nongmeikapam was born in Manipur and studied Bachelor in Arts in Choreography from the Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography. He was a contemporary performer with the dance company, Natya Stem Dance Kampni and a traditional performer with Natya Maya, Bangalore. He has trained in various movement vocabularies from accomplished practitioners and teachers from across the world. He currently works as a freelance dancer and an experimental dance filmmaker.

Yeon-Woo Na

Yeon-woo Na has been training, practicing and performing Korean traditional dance since the age of ten. She majored at Deok-won High School of Arts and completed the Bachelor in Fine Arts in Choreography from the Korean National University of Arts. As a dancer, she has worked with accomplished South Korean choreographers such as Jung-ho Nam, Sung-soo Ahn, Eun-mi Ahn, Ae-soon Ahn.

Yola Yulfianti

Yola Yulfianti graduated as a dance major from Jakarta Institute of the Arts (IKJ) in 2004. She developed her dancing and choreography ability by attending various workshops and has collaborated with choreographers and directors from Indonesia and abroad. Yulfianti choreographs and creates her own soundscape for her works. A few of her works include Payau (2004), Kupuku Caca (2006), Sitilatte (2009), Alone (2009), Almost Can't Breath (2011), My Moonlight (2011) and Ruwatan (2011), a collaboration between Pascasarjana IKJ with OCU Osaka. In 2010, she co-founded IDE (Indonesian Dance Expression), a space for mixed media dance expression. Yulfianti is a post-graduate in urban art and culture industry from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts where for her final exam project, she created Suku Yola, a dance film. And in 2012, she presented her latest work, Payau #2 Waterproof for the 11th Indonesian Dance Festival.

Raam Kumar R

Raam Kumar R has trained for 13 years in Kalarippayattu at the CVN Institute, Trivandrum under CV Govindan Kutti Nayar and G Satyanarayan. He joined Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts as a faculty member. In addition to teaching the diploma students kalarippayattu, he is a member of Attakkalari's Repertory Dance Company and a facilitator with Attakkalari's Education Outreach Programme. Through Attakkalari, he recently had the opportunity to share kalarippayattu techniques with dancers in Amsterdam.

Minal Prabhu

With roots firmly entrenched in the Kalakshetra tradition, Minal Prabhu is among the leading bharatanatyam teachers in Bangalore today. She has several group and solo choreographic works to her credit, which have been presented in India, Singapore and London. In addition to being a committed teacher at her training centre, Mudrika, Prabhu teaches aesthetics at the Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography and conducts bharatanatyam classes in dance schools. She also conducts annual workshops at The Srutilaya Institute, Singapore.

Murari Sharan Gupta

Murari Sharan Gupta, the managing trustee of Samam, is a devoted disciple of the renowned Birju Maharaj and an acclaimed artiste in his own right. He is a performer, creative choreographer and teacher. He has performed at renowned dance festivals of India and has a steady repertoire of performances of various dance ballets and solo dance recitals both in India and abroad. Sharan is a versatile artiste: while being thoroughly grounded in kathak, he is also adept in the folk dances of India, kalaripayattu and contemporary dance. He is also an accomplished tabla and pakhawaj player.

FACETS Mentors