Purawai Vyas
Curator
Purawai Vyas, is an emerging dance artist, with 20 years of training in Bharatanatyam, under Guru Lata Pada at Sampradaya Dance Academy. She has also trained in Ballet, modern/contemporary dance and Kalarippayattu during her undergraduate career and holds a Honours BFA in Dance along with a BSc in Biomedical Sciences from York University.
Purawai has had the opportunity to work with highly acclaimed choreographers, including Lata Pada, Atri Nundy, Neena Jayarajan, Suma Nair, Seeta Patel, Parshwanath Upadhye, Nova Bhattacharya and Tanveer Alam. She has been a part of several productions including Svāhā!, Mandala and Kintsugi, touring across Canada, Singapore, Indonesia, and sevaral cities in India.
Purawai has created and presented works in various festivals in the Greater Toronto Area, including CanAsian Dance’s Grit Short Dances Festival, Citadel’s Night Shift and Spring Mix and Toes For Dance’s Common Ground Festival, among others. Her pmost recent production, was a evening-length solo Bharatanatyam recital titled Smruti, presented in 2024.
She is passionate about sharing the art form of Bharatanatyam as a dance teacher at Sampradaya Dance Academy. As an independent artist, Purawai is interested in interdisciplinary rhythmic exchange and is exploring narratives in Indian mythology to create contemporary dance work.
Curatorial Statement
With Shvas Dance, I want to create inclusive space for Bharatanatyam and South Asian dance in Canada, rooted in classicism, driven by innovation, and grounded in community.
We are dedicated to preserving the integrity and richness of Bharatanatyam and other South Asian dance forms while exploring new creative territories. Our work creates space for South Asian classical and folk vocabularies to speak to contemporary ideas, fostering dialogue, inclusion, and artistic exchange.