Rasika Kumar

Rasika Kumar is a Bharatanatyam performer and choreographer, steeped in tradition but with contemporary sensibilities, based in California's Silicon Valley. She has been the Associate Artistic Director of the Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose (ADC) and is a principal artist, choreographer and teacher with the company. Rasika began her Bharatanatyam training at the age of four under her mother Mythili Kumar, ADC's Artistic Director, and performed her arangetram in 1996. She received advanced training from Padma Bhushan Kalanidhi Narayanan, Prof. C.V. Chandrasekar and Bragha Bessell, with additional coaching and mentoring from Mavin Khoo. She began Odissi training in 1994 with Asako Takami and has studied Odissi under Niharika Mohanty and Sujata Mohapatra at Guru Shradha since 2008. Rasika was a featured soloist, principal dancer and choreographer for ADC's performance seasons from 2005 to 2016. She began choreographing in 2002 after moving to Boston for undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a member of MIT Natya, and returned to the Bay Area in 2005. Her choreography has been featured at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, SF WestWave Festival, sjDANCEco's ChoreoProject Awards series and Drive East NYC, and her collaborations include Goddess, And... (2016), Unfiltered (2019) and And She Spoke (2022). Her work has earned an Arts Council Silicon Valley Performing Arts Fellowship (2008), Isadora Duncan Awards (2011 and 2018) and the Lakshmi Viswanathan Award (2014) from Sri Krishna Gana Sabha in Chennai. She premiered Shakti Unveiled (now Unbound) in 2017.