Artists

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  Featuring Anjali Patil

  

  Featuring Anjali Patil

  Canadian-born dancer and choreographer, Anjali Patil, has been trained in India under renowned masters of Kathak Classical Indian dance. She is the founder and artistic director of Aroha Fine Arts, one of only a handful of organizations working in the professional Kathak dance milieu.

  Anjali has performed her works at noteworthy events – from the Canada Dance Festival to Delhi International Arts Festival, the Junos to International Film Festival of India. A sought after teacher and coach, Anjali teaches in Ottawa, Toronto, India and the Middle East. She was invited as a guest lecturer at the Dance Department of Hyderabad University in India in 2018 and as a panelist at a dance seminar presented by National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, India, in 2019.

  In addition to her artistic pursuits, Anjali has a long history in the public sector and cultural policy as an employee of the Department of Canadian Heritage. She holds an M.A. in Public Administration from Carleton University and B.Comm. from University of Ottawa. She launched the annual ArohaFest – Canada’s first bilingual festival celebrating the arts of India in Canada to honour Canada’s 150th birthday.

  Recently, she worked on an international project for award-winning Canadian director Atom Egoyan. She is a recipient of the Corel Endowment for the Arts Award from the Ottawa Arts Council, Chalmers Performing Arts Award, Shastri Indo-Canadian Senior Arts Fellowship and was featured in a Kathak documentary produced by Doordarshan TV India. Anjali has been featured in the Foreign Affairs publication Canada & South Asia: Partners for the New Century. Anjali is regularly featured in media and is actively keeping the classical Indian dance scene thriving in Ottawa and beyond. 

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  Featuring Sonia St-Michel

  

  Featuring Sonia St-Michel

  As a classically trained, international Odissi dance performer for the past 20 years, Sonia is also an inspired choreographer.  She is artistic director of Sonia St-Michel Creations, an organization dedicated to artistic research, creation and dissemination of works involving collaborations across diverse mediums and artistic practices.  Sonia’s Odissi training began in Canada and then continued in India under the tutelage of Smt. Aloka Panikar and Smt. Sujata Mohapatra.  She was initiated to western classical singing by Stephanie Beames and Jonathan Voyer.  Her work has been presented in theatres, festivals and art galleries in Canada and abroad in venues such as the Odissi International festival in India, Galeria Rosenblueth in Mexico, the Ottawa Dance Directive, the Kalanidhi Fine Arts and Alliance Française in Toronto, Tangente and Festival Accès Asie in Montreal. Committed to promoting arts education she teaches Odissi dance and offers school workshops across Quebec and Ontario.

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