In their effort to promote young artists, Meru Education Foundation will be presenting Rasika Kumar, in a dance recital on April 24^th in Lexington. Rasika grew up in California and learnt the Bharatnatyam classical dance style with her mother, renowned dancer and teacher in the Bay area, Mythili Kumar. Rasika has been a student of Bharatnatyam since 1987. Since her arangetram in 1996, Rasika has toured with and performed in many of Abhinaya Dance Company's productions (1996-2000) with major roles in several of them. 

She came to Boston to attend school at MIT as a student of computer science (2000 - 2005). At MIT she was active in Natya, MIT's classical dance club and as the president of Natya, she organized choreographed, and performed in various events.  In the fall of 2004, Rasika decided to focus on her development as a solo artist by travelling to Chennai, India and learning from renowned teachers Prof. C.V. Chandrasekhar and Smt. Kalanidhi Narayanan. In December 2004 and January 2005, Rasika gave several performances in the music and dance festival to critical acclaim in India.

Since her graduation and subsequent return to the Bay Area, Rasika has been a featured soloist and, more recently, assistant choreographer for many of Abhinaya's recent productions (2005 - present).  Rasika's solo performance, Saatvika (2006), featured self-choreographed works which were received with great appreciation.  Rasika's choreographic works both solo and group, were most recently featured in Abhinaya productions, Ritusamhara (2006), Poetic Splendor (2007), Prithvi (2007), and Mayiladum Alagan (2008).

Rasika has received several awards including one from the Arts Council of Silicon Valley Performing Arts and a Fellowship for 2008. She received an award for the 2008 Ethnic Dance Festival and performed at the WestWave Dance Festival.  

She currently resides in the Bay Area and works as a software engineer at Google, Inc while actively pursuing the dance form and developing as a solo artist and choreographer with hopes of starting her own professional dance company.

It has been Rasika’s dream to perform in Boston, a city that became her second home. She will be presenting  several dances from the story of the great epic Mahabharata called “Dharma Yuddh -- The Great War of the Mahabharata” In particular she will depict Drapaudi, the story of the Geeta, Karna and Gandhari. We invite you to come and see this presentation of the Mahabharata on Friday, April 24^th 2009, at the National Heritage Museum, in Lexington, MA at 7:00 pm. For more information please visit www.merufoundation.org

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