Artistic Director: Anwesha Dutta

 

Anwesha is a senior technology executive in the healthcare field focused on digital transformation & health equity. She is a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting’s Life Sciences and Healthcare practice, focusing on Strategy Consulting. Prior to Deloitte, Anwesha was with Universal Health Services, a fortune 300 company and one of the largest healthcare systems in the US. Before UHS, Anwesha has been a visionary executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Healthcare Transformation consulting practice for more than a decade. She was honored as a minority business leader by Philadelphia Business Journal in 2016 for her professional, artistic and charitable accomplishments.

On the artistic front, she received her training in Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance, Navanritya, from the Sangeet Natak Academy Award winner late Gurus Dr. Manjushree Chaki-Sircar & Ranjabati Sircar of Calcutta & other Gurus. She is also well versed in many dance forms including creative, modern and folk dances. She also trained in North Indian Classical Music (Sangeet Visharad degree in music) and was an All India Radio child artist. Anwesha has performed extensively in India and US. She is the artistic director of Nava Nritya Dance Academy (www.navanritya.org), which she founded in 2004 as a hobby. Her academy has been training 60-70 students per year at all levels in addition to presenting highly acclaimed group and solo productions at a professional level at our own venues in addition to Philadelphia Art Museum, Wells Fargo Center, US Mint, Please Touch Museum to name a few. Her academy was the main dance school to be featured on WHYY's documentary on Bharatnatyam and on PwC's video of cultural diversity. Anwesha is passionate about experimenting with poetry, and music from across the world. She enjoys the opportunity to coach students to become strong leaders with robust cultural dexterity and a distinctive personal brand.

The academy has raised $450,000+ for various charities including her own Ray of Hope International Foundation (www.letsgivehope.org), through its annual shows and other events.

 Assistant Teachers

  • Anitha Kannan

    Anitha started learning Bharathanatyam at the young age of 3, in India, under Guru Smt. Teresa and later with Guru Smt. Prabha Nagarajan. She was thrilled to dance Bharathanatyam and excited at the opportunity to learn the contemporary Navanritya dance style when she joined in 2996. In 2008 she started teaching and realized a new passion in teaching and a chance to explore creative choreographies for group and solo arangetram dances. She loves to see her students grow up into beautiful dancers and takes pride in dancing alongside them. Her daughter, Nishitha also learned from her and Ms. Anwesha, performed her arangetram in 2019, and graduated in 2022. Now as an alumnus of the dance school, Nishitha loves to come back to the dance school which she considers as her second home.

    Anitha & her family love to give back to the community through Ray of Hope International Foundation. She also teaches young kids to perform at Tamil Sangam events.

    Anitha has a BS in Civil Engineering, and a MS in Sustainable Engineering from Villanova University. She worked in the academic field at Gwynedd Mercy University and at Villanova University for about 6 years. Anitha is now a Life Cycle Assessment Practitioner at TerraCycle’s global R&D team. She conducts environmental impact assessments for recycling operations, scope emissions, and materiality analysis on various waste streams.

  • Dr. Grishma Rali

    Grishma is a revered pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, known for her deep commitment to the health and well-being of her young patients. Beyond her medical expertise, Grishma holds a Bachelor's in Dance (Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form). Starting at a very young age of 6, Grishma began her artistic journey of learning Bharatanatyam with her Guru Sri Satish Pillai and his son Sri Shiva Pillai. She passionately gave performances throughout the school years at various occasions and eventually graduated in Dance at age 15.

    After a long span of 22 years which she dedicated to pursuing a career with medical school, MS in Public Health, Residency in Pediatrics and getting settled in her professional life, she finally decided to rejoin dance and bring her passion back to life. She joined Nava Nritya Dance academy in 2022 as a senior dancer and polished her skills, continues to pick up new skills and new dances and most importantly passed on the same love and dedication to dance to the younger generation by joining as a teacher. Her daughter, Smiti also started learning Bharatnatyam along with her and that truly was her dream come true. She now dreams of sharing the stage with her daughter for an Arangetram, marking a significant milestone in their dance journey together.

    Grishma embodies a remarkable blend of dedication, passion, and a deep commitment to her cultural roots, making her a truly inspiring figure both in and out of the pediatric ward.

  • Maya Rahman

    Maya Z. Rahman, M.S., started taking dancing lessons at age six, after watching a group of girls dance at the Temple. She joined Nava Nritya Dance Academy with her older brother, and they danced together for almost a decade. Maya completed her Arangetram in 2013 under Guru Anwesha Dutta. Since then, she has performed in a television (PBS - WHYY) documentary, at a Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers basketball game, at JNJ, libraries, a Painted Bride festival, and at several local temples. Maya enjoys sharing her passion for dancing with her students and enjoys imparting her love for dancing with them.

    As a woman in STEM, Maya works a scientist at Gamry Instruments, primarily helping customers to properly plan the conduct of their electrochemical engineering projects. She help engineers who are working to make electric cars more efficient, glucose sensors more reliable, and to ensure corrosion testing is done effectively.

    Maya received both her graduate and undergraduate degrees in a unique 4+1 program at Temple University. In her free time, Maya loves to travel, having visited more than 25 countries and states so far, and she is a voracious reader, having read more than 100 books in each of the past two years.

    Maya and her loving family have been a huge supporter of both NNDA and Ray of Hope from the very beginning, and their dedication is exemplary. Maya also takes pride being a mentor to dancers of all ages.