"Mehta, Banerjee, and Nader carried the lineage of Kathak with extraordinary precision and heart, offering the audience an unfortunately rare look into this beautiful dance form." — Denali Huff, LA Dance Chronicle

Sandhi — in Sanskrit, a charged threshold, a meeting point between states — is Rukhmani Mehta's personal exploration of the traditional Kathak solo as an opening or gateway, performed with acclaimed musical artists Jayanta Banerjee on sitar and Salar Nader on tabla. Kathak invites us into a world: the sacred temples of ancient India, the grandeur of the Mughal courts, the ecstatic longing of the Bhakti saints, the songs of the courtesans, the stories of gods and goddesses that have traveled across time. Sandhi is where three currents meet: the story of India and her people, the story of Kathak itself, and the story of one artist at the threshold of both. Here, the ancient and the immediate collapse into one another — and in that collision, artist and audience find themselves changed, remade by an encounter with the living, the sacred, and the eternal.

Rukhmani Mehta is a Kathak artist, choreographer, and educator whose work has shaped the landscape of Indian classical dance in the United States for over two decades. Both lineage bearer and contemporary voice, she works at the intersection of classical Indian dance, contemporary performance, and embodied inquiry. A senior disciple of legendary master Pandit Chitresh Das, she is Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Leela Dance Collective and Artistic Director of Leela Youth Dance Company — where she mentors young South Asian women as artists and cultural ambassadors. Her original works have been supported by residencies at Works & Process and Newman Center for the Performing Arts and include SPEAK, a kathak-tap collabaration; Son of the Wind, a traditional dance-drama; Encounters with Beauty, which weaves kathak dance together with contemporary chamber music and Hindustani vocals; and Sandhi, a personal exploration of the traditional kathak solo. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai), Kimmel Center, 92NY, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Broad Stage, Festival of Tabla, and NC State Live, among others. Mehta is a recipient of the Fulbright Award and is frequently invited to speak on embodied knowledge, lineage and mentorship, and the role of dance in consciousness and transformation.

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