Sheetal Gandhi is an intercultural, multi-disciplinary director/choreographer, performer and educator.  Her career has spanned genres and disciplines from dancing with Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion to playing the lead in the Broadway production of Bombay Dreams.  As a National Dance Performance (NDP) and MAP Fund award-winning choreographer, her solo dance-theater work, Bahu-Beti-Biwi, has been presented in over 16 cities in the U.S. and in 5 countries. Her work has been described as “eloquent, inventive, virtuosic dance-theater” by the Philadelphia Inquirer utilizing “incisive commentary offset by brilliant touches of humor” (Narthaki).  Sheetal’s curiosity and deep interest in culture and humanity fuel her inspiration as an artist: living and performing in Ghana, West Africa, researching centuries-old women’s songs in North India, traveling with Chinese circus artists, and more.  Most recently Sheetal had the incredible opportunity to be a pop-star in a 2-week production in Dubai, singing in Mandarin for audiences from all over China!  Sheetal has an MFA in Dance/Choreography from UCLA and is a certified professional Pilates instructor.  She currently teaches dance and theater classes at universities and colleges around greater Los Angeles.  Also in Los Angeles, you’ll find her singing with the L.A. based, 40-person a cappella group, The Over Tones.  When she’s not creating for the stage, she is creating for nature – tending to her garden and to the healing of our planet. 

Ulka Simone Mohanty is a dancer, choreographer, actor, voice actor and occasional chef. Originally from Montreal, Canada, and now residing in Los Angeles, California, she has a passion for arts education and storytelling of all kinds, especially when she can combine dance with other forms including theatre, voice acting and martial arts. She frequently performs in dance and theatre productions all across the globe including the 2008 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad, IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance in New Delhi, India, and most recently San Diego Repertory Theatre’s House of Joy, featuring daring sword-fights in the martial arts form of kalaripayattu. She has choreographed multiple live shows for Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park, including Rivers of Light and the Disney-Pixar collaboration Up! A Great Bird Adventure. As a voice actor, she has voiced numerous video games and audiobooks, is the recurring voice of Dr. Kapur on NBC Universal’s Nina’s World, Echo in the video game Crackdown 3, and the voice of multiple live shows throughout Disney World’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando, Florida. You can catch her on the TV series The Moodys (FOX) and in a supporting role in the upcoming sci-fi film Needle in a Timestack (John Ridley). She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science & Cognitive Science from McGill University, is a certified yoga teacher, possesses an advanced belt in Shaolin White Crane Kung Fu. and has competed as a chef on Cutthroat Kitchen (The Food Network).

Shyamala Moorty grew up dancing, acting and occasionally juggling in Monterey, California. Now, she is a director, choreographer, writer, performer, educator and mother, whose work draws on contemporary Indian and western dance, theater, yoga, and community engagement. She is a founding member of the Dancing Storytellers and the Post Natyam Collective and has performed across the U.S. as well as in Canada, the Czek Republic, Germany, India, and the U.K.  Shyamala’s solo work has been described as “that special kind of healing that art can accomplish” in the book Contemporary Indian Dance (2011), and as a “tour de force” in the LA Times (2004). She also has performed as an ensemble member with Great Leap, the Rangoli Foundation, and as a soloist and principal dancer for the Aman International Folk Ensemble.  With TeAda Productions, she created performances with and about various groups such as taxi drivers, restaurant workers, and South Asian youth.  In education, Shyamala has taught workshops at hundreds of schools and designed curriculum for the Aman Dance Educators, the Segerstrom school of Music and Dance for Children with Disabilities, and the ESCAPE program using dance to teach concepts of science.  Shyamala has an MFA in dance from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures, and currently lives in Long Beach where she directs, choreographs, and guest teaches in various colleges and universities.