Purawai Vyas
Curator
Purawai Vyas is a Canadian dance artist based in Toronto, with a practice rooted in over two decades of Bharatanatyam training under Guru Lata Pada at Sampradaya Dance Academy. Her interdisciplinary background includes ballet, modern-contemporary dance, and Kalarippayattu, alongside an Honours BFA in Dance from York University. As a performer, she has appeared in Kintsugi (Sampradaya Dance Creations, 2025), Convergent Divergence (Toronto Dance Theatre, 2023), and Svāhā (Nova Dance, 2022). She has toured extensively across Canada, India, and Southeast Asia. Her choreographic work has been presented by CanAsian Dance, Toes for Dance, and Toronto Dance Theatre, and in 2024 she premiered Smruti, a solo Bharatanatyam production. Purawai is the Founder of SHVAS Dance Company, where she is committed to advancing sustainable, contemporary creation based in South Asian dance practices.
Through choreography, performance, and community-based initiatives, Purawai nurtures dialogue between tradition and innovation, reimagining South Asian dance forms as a living, evolving language of embodied storytelling. Purawai invites audiences to experience South Asian dance as both a site of cultural memory and a dynamic form of contemporary artistic expression, uniting the greater community.
Curatorial Statement
RangaMandal is a participatory/community-based dance and visual art project rooted in the Gujarati folk dance of Garba. Over nine nights, artists and community members dance in circles upon a large canvas, their paint-dipped footsteps leaving traces of rhythm, devotion, and colour. As layers of movement accumulate, a mandala emerges—a collective artwork born from shared motion and intention.
Rangamandal reimagines ritual as contemporary art, celebrating spirituality, repetition, and belonging through embodied collaboration. It invites all participants, regardless of background, to move together in joy and reverence, transforming community gathering into a living, breathing act of creation.