Kavitha Krishnan

Kavitha Krishnan founded the non-profit arts company Maya Dance Theatre (MDT) with Imran Manaff, creative producer in 2007. MDT received SEED Grant from NAC, 2012-2015. The company focus on Arts for Social Cause and creates inter-disciplinary dancetheatre works to shine light on social issues and stories.

Trained in Bharathanatyam, and with a vast experience performing internationally, Kavitha creates contemporary dance with Asian perspective and she represented Singapore in the ASEAN Contemporary Dance Production, “Realizing Rama and toured internationally (2002 to 2007).

In 2018, she formed Diverse Abilities Dance Collective (DADC), a community initiative by MDT with six founding members with Down Syndrome, supported by chairperson of the Board of DADC, late Ms Malathi Das. Together with professionals and other industry practitioners and international collaborators, the dancers with diverse abilities aspire to perform and create as semi-professionals.

During the pandemic, DADC worked with producer/theatre director Jeffrey Tan of Theatre Today and No Strings Attached (Adelaide, Australia) to debut their online work – SAME, SAME supported by Singapore International Foundation, SIF. The work toured 2 Australian and a New Zealand online fringe festival (2021-2022). This year under SIF’s Arts for Good, DADC recently completed an online exchange collaboration with Nalitari, an Inclusive Dance Company from Indonesia. The team has also worked with seniors to co-create a creative movement online workshop session, “Body-In-Motion” to empower seniors through the arts (www.mayadancetheatre.org).

Kavitha has received an Artistic Excellence award from the late President, Mr SR Nathan, has been conferred the title, “Women with a Heart” by SICCI and is part of SIF’s Arts for Good Fellowship (2021). Recently she was recognised as one of the 12 finalists of Singapore’s Silent Hero 2022.

With also her professional qualification as an occupational therapist (OT), Kavitha values dance as a medium for communication and building connections; and she strongly believes that Dance Heals and Empowers.