Shrikant Subramaniam
The choreographer and storyteller Shrikant Subramaniam has been performing, teaching and conducting Bharatanatyam dance workshops for over a decade in the UK. He acquired an MA in Bharatanatyam from Nalanda dance research centre in Mumbai (affiliated to the University of Mumbai, India) and has also been awarded an MA research degree in South Asian Dance studies from the University of Roehampton in London, UK.
Through the guidance of teachers and mentors in dance and theatre studies in India and the UK, Shrikant has worked his way through the evolutionary processes from performance to instruction to composition/choreography.
‘Dance is about people, and not performers’ according to Shrikant, who develops movement choices that encourage audiences to see Bharatanatyam as an evocative language which constructs movement to reveal human intent. He has developed partnerships with museums and art galleries to create response-based performances rather than set repertoire pieces. As a soloist, he performs extensively in the UK at festivals and for special commissioned events through out the year.
Shrikant was awarded a grant from the Arts Council of England to research into West Yorkshire folk tales and develop an intercultural performance which takes place in March 2019. Based in Saltaire, he trains students in Bharatanatyam and spoken word/theatrical paradigms at his local SS Dance Academy.
DAVID
David began composing and performing original eclectic music several years ago, performing solo and with South African singer Joyce Moholoagae across the north of England. He sang tenor in Manchester Cathedral Choir for 2 years, has composed and recorded three CDs of original songs and music (available on iTunes) and has had a first collection of poetry published.
Since 2010, David has been Secretary and member of Songo Drumming Project, an African music and dance association based in Leeds. As Associate Artist at the Bradford Playhouse from 2015 - 2017 he produced and mixed sound for live theatre and presented solo performances. He was awarded MA in Sound Design in 2018 before beginning a PhD in Performance and Aesthetics at Leeds Beckett University. During the course he produced soundscapes for the university’s Light Night performance in October 2016.
In 2017 he formed the ‘Mimesis’ arts collective with Shrikant Subramaniam to develop performances and workshops focussing on dance, sound, poetry coupled with interactive video manipulation, percussion, guitar and Turkish baglama.
He was invited to perform electroacoustic surround-sound compositions at the Echochroma XVI Concert, Leeds Beckett University and at the Electric Saturday event of Leeds College of Music’s ‘Sounds Like This’ festival.
An application was accepted for a presentation at the Salford University 2018 SPARC (Salford Post-graduate Annual Research Programme) conference of ‘The Power of Music’ a performance collaboration which included poetry, video, dance and electronic music. The conference theme was Internationalisation and Collaboration.
David has recently been selected as a poet in the Composer and Poets Forum of Leeds Lieder Festival which takes place in April 2019 at LCM.
David’s own website can be found here: www.vidasonik.co.uk
