International dancer Supriya Desa sizzles in Bangalore

The Desais from Raleigh, North Carolina in US came to visit Bangalore during the Christmas-New year break. Supriya Desai, the internationally known Kuchipudi and Bharathanatyam dancer, is a household name amongst the Indian-Americans and other locals of North Carolina. She and her two daughters --ninteen year Karishma and twelve-year old Ridhima accompanied her with her husband Surendra left behind. They came for the express purpose of recording dance items for Prasar Bharathi (Bangalore Doordarshan) by young Karishma. Karishma, who did her arangetram two years ago, was selected by Doordarshan after a very tough and competitive audition process last year. Karishma also gave an outstanding recital at Seva Sadana in Malleshwaram through the World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific Bangalore Chapter during her visit. This followed the outstanding program she performed for the Department of Kannada and Culture of the Govt. of Karnataka, at Ravindra Kalakshetra, in 2007, where her fan following first started in Bangalore.
Supriya had already become an accomplished and established dancer in Bangalore in the eighties when she was living with her parents in fourth block, Jayanagar and was a graded artist for Doordarshan as a leading Bharathanatyam and Kuchipudi performer. She had given performances for such prestigious organizations and events such as the Festival of India in the former USSR, the first World Kannada Conference in Mysore, ICCR and International Trade festival in New Delhi. She also performed for an national award-winning TV documentary, called "Nectar in Stone", on the famous Halebid temples that was telecast nationally and in Europe.
When she got married and migrated to the US, in 1989, she carried her talent and a desire to promote our arts and culture in the adopted home land. In 1991 the family moved from California to North Carolina and immediately she established a dance school with the name Payal Dance Academy and is now the leading Indian dancer in the area. Besides the classical dance work, Supriya was very involved various voluntary and community work in the area. She was the founding director and the first President of Sampige, the Raleigh area Kannada Association, was one of the founding directors and first treasurer of AKKA (Americada Kannada KootagaLa Agara) and cultural committee president of the Hindu Society of North Carolina. She has also been a big supporter of visiting artistes from India and has enabled performances of many music and dance artistes from Bangalore.

Her outstanding work, immense contribution and excellence in Bharathanatyam won her the prestigious title of "Karnataka Kalashree" in 2003, awarded by the Sangeeta Nritya Academy, Govt. of Karnataka. Besides this she recently received the title "Swar Kala Gaurav " by the renowned institution, Saraswati Sangeet Vidyalaya in Bangalore at it's 2009 80th Anniversary celebration and "Natya Shakuntale" awarded by the mayor of Bangalore in 1987.
Karishma has very much followed her mother's footsteps and shows the potential of exceeding her mother's achievements. Even as a three year old, she would perform and entire dance item from her mother's repertoire, right after she had finished her stage performance. She was pretty much the darling of the audiences wherever the dance company toured, especially when they visited fifteen major cities in the US to perform the dance-drama Meera. In 2006, she received the Best Bharatanatyam Child Artist award from Kalavardhini, Chennai.  When she did her arangetram later in the year of 2006, in Raleigh, it was rated as the best in the area for the last several years.