IDYA

Sharanya Mukhopadhyay, has been studying dance since the tender age of 4. She started learning odissi under the tutelage of Srimati Nandita Behera and then numerous famous teachers like Aruna Mohanty, Monoranjan Prodhan and others in Orissa Dance Academy. Renowned dance critics have called Sharanya a child prodigy. She has been compared with Shirley Temple and other doyens of art and culture by judges and experts. At age twelve, she was the youngest dancer ever in Los Angeles dance Kaleidoscope. She was on the cover pages of Orange County Register and has received positive reviews in several major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Tribune, Shruti and others.

Sharanya has been able to establish herself as a leading solo artist in the Odissi style and was blessed with a rare combination of both power and grace at a very early age. While she is constantly striving to perfect her systematized technique, gait, movement, she has excellent skills of enactment or abhinaya of the lyrics of the dance. Sharanya has been raised and exposed to the Western culture but she has kept up her Indian tradition through Odissi Dance. With her devotional attitude, she consistently tries to transcend the physical expression of dance to Bhakti or love of God. Sharanya seems to be as committed to her LA community as to the country of her origin.

She has performed in several charity events, for flood victims in Orissa, India and in hospitals for the elderly and sick in Orange County. Not only has she shown dedication to the Odissi style of dance, but has taken initiative to pursue other dance styles as well such as Flamenco, Hip hop, Modern, Indian Folk and Bollywood, Korean and African. She is also trained in Tae-Kwon-do and uses this martial art form in her choreography, as well as her training in the different areas of dance. In 2005, she choreographed a wonderful Musical called “Sinbad,” which consisted of eight dance sequences that were drastically different in style from one another.

Sharanya is an aspiring, talented and committed young artist whose mission is to express this ancient dance form to the rest of the world. With this in mind she has taken her dance as a “talent” to Miss West Riverside county Talent pageant as well as to Miss Teen California pageant and Miss South Asia and won titles in all the pageants. She is also a Newscaster at channel 18 with Showbiz India in Los Angeles. She has started touring regularly in India and has been professionally performing in the USA. She has been highly acclaimed in major newspapers in India for her performances.

With the motive to spread this ancient dance form, she has started teaching and will be teaching at her home at Yorba Linda and also several other places.