Vidya Kotamraju

Her mother carried it. Her mother's mother carried it. By the time she was a girl, the carrying was already within her. Missing. Gone. Chuppi. reckons with the burden women inherit and the silences that follow. Drawing on Bharatanatyam, bridal vocabulary, bangles, alta, sindoor, and the mangalsutra, the work traces a body that performs everything asked of it and disappears anyway. Not by force. But by the steady weight of expectation, of duty, of guilt, and of being told this is what women do. What women must do.

The second in a trilogy of solos on identity, erasure, and transformation, following Maktub: Ashes to Alchemy.

Choreographer and Performer: Vidya Kotamraju

Music Composition, NAVTAR® and Voice: Vishnu R

Lighting Designer: Itai Erdal

Spoken Text, Costume and Scenic Elements: Vidya Kotamraju

Outside Eye: Nova Bhattacharya

Music composition rooted in Carnatic music and inspired by Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps

Vidya Kotamraju (Canada)Vidya Kotamraju is a dance artist, choreographer, and educator based on unceded Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver, BC). Working within Bharatanatyam and dance-theatre, her practice positions the form as a contemporary thinking body, capable of holding present-day questions without loosening its technical rigour. Trained under Jai Govinda (Canada), Bragha Bessell (India), and Sheila Jagadish Kumar (India), she creates choreographic work that is structurally grounded and thematically urgent. Her work has been presented across Canada, India, and the United States, including at the Vancouver International Dance Festival and Silk Route Festival at The Dance Centre, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, The Dance Centre, Dance West Network, and New Works. Her recent solo Maktub: Ashes to Alchemy, the first in a trilogy on identity, erasure, and transformation, draws on The Alchemist alongside the global refugee crisis, situating personal transformation within broader systems of displacement. The work is currently touring across Canada. Vidya is the founder of House of Indian Dance, a Vancouver-based organization dedicated to training, creation, and presentation of Bharatanatyam. She has served on the boards of New Works and Mandala Arts and Culture, and is a recipient of the 2017 Shade of Hope Award.

@vidyakotamraju | www.vidyadance.com

Vishnu R (India)Vishnu R is an India-based classical and jazz fusion performer, composer, and the inventor of the Navtar®, a patented 9-string instrument bridging Carnatic melody and Western harmony. A two-time winner of the Beyond Music International Project (Switzerland, 2022 and 2024), Vishnu has performed at the invitation of the President of the Academy Awards (USA, 2024), is a Fellow of the US Government’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs OneBeat program and a recipient of the Karnataka State Government’s (India) Rajyotsava Yuva Prashasti award.His collaborations include 5x Grammy winners Michael League and Bill Laurance of Snarky Puppy, Grammy-winning Angelique Kidjo, and Padma Vibhushan Dr. Umayalapuram Sivaraman.www.vishnunavtar.com

Itai Erdal (Canada) Itai Erdal is an award-winning lighting designer, writer and performer, and the artistic director of The Elbow Theatre, for whom he co-wrote and performed in Soldiers of Tomorrow (winner of the 2024 Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe), Hyperlink, This Is Not A Conversation and A Very Narrow Bridge. Itai’s first solo show: How to Disappear Completely (The Chop) has had 27 remounts and won the best director award at the 2013 Summerworks Festival (James Long). Itai has designed over 350 shows for theatre, dance and opera companies in over 50cities around the world, including 21 shows for the Arts Club Theatre, 15 shows for Studio 58, 11 shows for the Stratford Festival, and 5 shows for Vancouver Opera. He won six Jessie Richardson Awards, Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award, a Guthrie Award and the Design Award at the Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted to the Siminovitch Prize in 2018 and 2024. www.itaierdal.com, www.theelbow.ca