ABOUT
Brinda Guha, she/her
I identify as a non-disabled, cisgendered, queer, South Asian American woman with roots in Bengal and the Jersey Shore. I am an artist, choreographer, producer, teaching artist, curator and arts administrator.
PHOTO BY LVDF
PHOTO BY ERIN PATRICE O'BRIEN
DANCER
Brinda Guha is a Bessie-nominated artist and has been learning North Indian Classical Kathak dance for over 25 years under the tutelage of her mother, Smt. Malabika Guha. She has been performing professionally on the national level for well over a decade, as well as internationally on group and solo projects, She has collaborated with many east coast performing artists and musicians, and has been on the bill at several theater venues and community concerts. Since 2007, when Brinda participated in a month-long Spanish classical Flamenco workshop in Spain, she returned to NYC only to find Dionisia Garcia of Flamenco NYC, whom she studied under for a decade. Before she started Flamenco, she studied other forms of Classical Indian dance, including Manipuri East Indian Classical dance from Smt. Kalavati Devi and her daughter, Bimbavati Devi. As of late, Brinda has been continuing her training in Kathak, Manipuri, and various Contemporary Fusion styles. Her own movement vocabulary has expanded, but continued to build over her classical base. This journey has led her to her signature style of Contemporary Indian dance, a name that is currently under review. The eventual goal is to develop her signature movement as a philosophy under the Contemporary Indian umbrella.
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Brinda currently dances with Soles of Duende, a multicultural percussive trio rooted in the rhythms of Tap (Amanda Castro), Flamenco (Arielle Rosales), and Kathak (Guha). They are 2023 Bessies Award nominees, and have been featured as cover stars for Dance Magazine (March 2023), Sunday Arts section in the New York Times (January 2023), Critic's Pick in the New York Times (2022), and named one of NYT's Best Dance Performances (2022).
CHOREOGRAPHER + EDUCATOR
Brinda began choreographing when she attended college at New York University. Her first choreographic project "RISE" (dance production based on the poems of Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes) started in 2005 but then evolved into a larger project that was presented in five Indian cities as well as London, England.
With Kalamandir of NJ Dance School, Brinda began to teach and choreograph the advanced and intermediate students for local dance productions and performances, setting group numbers and solos on many of the students. Fast forward to 2013, and Kalamandir Dance Company started to take off in the tri-state area while Brinda's choreography work gained some momentum. Since then, Brinda has choreographed works for her company and many local dance groups, presenting work at Lucille Lortel Theater, Brooklyn Dance Festival, NYCDA Dance Festival, Drive East Festival, National Sawdust, Young Choreographer's Festival, Danza Heights Festival, Greenspace, JCAL Making Moves Festival, Broadway Dance Center, Gowanus Arts Center, Secret Theater, Erasing Borders Festival, Dixon Place, Grounds for Sculpture, George St. Playhouse, NJ State Theater, The Knockdown Center, Hammerstein Ballroom, Madison Square Garden, and more. She teaches and sets work on elite dancers at various tri-state area dance studios and universities, including Kalamandir of NJ Dance School, Swarthmore College, Yale University, Broadway Dance Center, Liberated Movement, Wind Up Dance Tour, The Leadership Program, House of Duende, and Fashion Institute of Technology.
Brinda's collaboration roster includes teaching and setting work with Andy Blankenbuehler, Justin Conte, Phil Orsano, Derek Mitchell, Neil Schwartz, Stacie Webster, Ashle Dawson, Kumari Suraj, Lauren Cox, Carlos Neto, Omari Mizrahi, Bala + Sonali Skandan, Myriam Gadri, Ginger Cox & Subhasis Das.
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The vast majority of Brinda's choreographic pursuits were rooted in independent production and presentation of her own work. It transitioned to majority commissioned work in 2017, but her heart work is in independent production and presentation, which planted seeds for her to become a producer and curator.
PHOTO BY MARIA PANINA
PHOTO COURTESY OF NABC
THEATER + MODELING
Brinda started acting on stage in 2009, but never received any formal training in the craft. She learned theater performance basics from local directors and coaches on a workshop-to-workshop basis, and has since been performing on stage. In 2009, Brinda performed in Badal Sircar’s “Pagla Ghora”, directed by celebrated Bollywood filmmaker, Amol Palekar. She later debuted a lead role at the South Asian Theater Festival’s staging of “Red Oleanders” and “The Little Clay Cart” (2009/Direction Nupur Lahiri, 2010/Direction Farley Richmond). Brinda has performed in theater productions since, including the lead in Gargi Mukherjee's "Our Voices", as well as in a short production directed by Subhasis Das for 2015's South Asian Theater Festival's Theater In Break installment of "Ami Chitragada", which ultimately traveled to five venues over the course of 2017. She co-directed (alongside Birsa Chatterjee) the opening ceremony of the 2023 South Asian Theater Festival.
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Brinda walked in fashion shows for designer LVDF and print modeled for NYC-based athleisure small businesses. You can also find Brinda on the cover of Sandhya Menon's teen novel, "When Dimple Met Rishi".
CURATOR + PRODUCER
Brinda began WISE FRUIT NYC in 2017, an artistic showcase dedicated to the feminine divine and honoring/benefiting select women-led organizations. The initiative started with a sincere urge to create a platform where "art meets activism", putting dancers and choreographers and other interdisciplinary artists on a platform to use their talents towards a larger picture. The mixer event is curated specifically to highlight NYC-based artists who can yield action. The event has successfully been covered by NowThis Her Media & Dance Magazine and is now approaching its 12th iteration. Between live installments, Wise Fruit NYC functions as a community space and online campaign that services the field with beginner tools and resources in social justice and anti-racism initiatives. Follow WISE FRUIT online @wisefruitnyc.
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In 2019, Brinda began working for Dance/NYC, a service organization which promotes the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. Dance/NYC’s approach cuts across its public programs—advocacy and research; leadership training, networking and convening; technology and visibility; and regranting—and all aspects of its operations. Its approach is intersectional, building upon multiple issue areas that together create a more just, equitable, and inclusive dance ecology. This opportunity bridged Brinda's commitment to arts equity with her love of artistic practice. She started out as the Symposium Coordinator, and is now their Senior Producing Coordinator. She has served on the production team for the Dance/NYC State of NYC Dance Researching Convening event (2023), 10 iterations of the Dance Industry Census Roundtable Series (2022-2023), 3 iterations of the annual Dance/NYC Symposium (2020-2022), and 9 iterations of the Dance/NYC #ArtistsAreNecessaryWorkers campaign (2020).
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In 2023, Brinda began working with ADC Consulting, a boutique arts consultancy firm equipping mission-driven organizations to create long-term cultural impact, as their Consultant in Production & Marketing. She freelances and donates her time in arts consultancy for various independent arts workers in the field, and applies her knowledge in the field toward an acting company manager role for Soles of Duende. In 2024, she was a lead researcher for NCCAkron's Podcast, How People Move People (Season 4), in the original conversation series, "As Grandmother Says / Dida Bole Je".
PHOTO BY KYLE BREEN
PHOTO BY JAMES JIN
SERVICE TO THE FIELD
Brinda served on the advisory board for Dance Teacher Magazine in 2022-2024, and is currently on the programming committee for Gold Standard Arts Foundation, a service organization for AAPI dance creatives. She also served as a dance juror for the 2024 Princess Grace Awards, a review council panelist for the 2024 Lower Manhattan Cultural Creative Engagement, and a review panelist for the 2023 Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellowship. From 2017-2019, Brinda also served on the Selection Committee for the New York Dance & Performance Awards (Bessies).
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Brinda has contributed to various publications over the years, including Dance Magazine (2021 Feature Engaging with Specificity, 2021 Feature The Fusion Purist, 2023 Contributor We Can’t Go Back: How the Pandemic Created Space to Reflect on Unsustainable or Harmful Dance Industry Norms, 2022 Contributor Credit Where It’s Due: Handling Credit on Collaborative Creation, 2021 Writer I’m Just Saying, I’ll Need Like Another Solid Week Before I Can Reply to Your Email), Dance Informa (2021 Contributor Is ballet really the foundation of all dance forms? An investigation and exploration), and Dancegeist Magazine (2020 cover feature).