Purawai Vyas (SHE/HER)

Company Dancer and Administrative/Marketing Coordinator

Purawai Vyas, is an Indo-Canadian emerging dance artist, who began her training in Bharatanatyam at the age of eight and completed her arangetram in 2015 under Guru Lata Pada. She continues to train under her Guru and has had the privilege of taking workshops with highly acclaimed artists, such as, Guru Harikrishna Kalyanasundaram, Priyadarshini Govind, Bragha Bessel, Parshwanath Upadhye, Nova Bhattacharya and Padmini Chettur. Purawai has also received training in modern/contemporary dance, ballet, kalaripayattu and hip hop. She has been a part of multiple dance works in the Toronto community including Play Seriously (inTO focus) [2021], Songs of the Blue God [2021] and Nirguna (Night Shift) [2019]. Purawai graduated with a BFA in Dance along with a BSc. in Biomedical Sciences from York University in the spring of 2020. Currently, she teaches Bharatanatyam at Sampradaya Dance Academy, is a company dancer for Sampradaya Dance Creations and has been working with Nova Dance since December of 2020. She is also exploring her practice in Bharatanatyam as a basis for creating contemporary choreographic works.

Birthplace: Ahmedabad, India

Training/Dance Vocabularies: Bharatanatyam (Thanjavur Bani), Limon/Contemporary-based Modern, Kalaripayattu, Ballet, Hip Hop.

For Nova Dance: Svāhā!; Discover Dance Curatorial Team; Communications/Newsletter

THIS MUST BE FUN - I've been given the opportunity to shift into many roles at Nova Dance; from being a dancer, to helping with administration, curation and communications. I've learned to have fun in these different roles and embrace the idea of play and experimentation in everything we do at Nova Dance