Aakash Odedra Company are busier than ever with touring productions, delivering workshops in our community and running immersive training weekends with world class choreographers in London, Birmingham and our home city of Leicester. At these busy times, it’s important to ensure that we are aligned with our three pillars and planning ahead for future projects and productions that reflect these in the best possible way. Our three pillars are;
Artistic Productions
We create and tour the best dance works to all corners of the Earth.
Participation and Community Engagement
We engage the widest range of society we can with exciting participatory and community activities.
Training the Next Generation of Cultural Practitioners
We train the next generation of brilliant cultural practitioners
2023 has already been an excellent year for our artistic productions as we see Little Murmur touring schools, colleges and festivals both nationally and internationally, Samsara breaks ground in China touring four major cities and Aakash visited New Delhi, India for the first time in 12 years to perform to a sold out venue with his solos Echoes and Constellation.
Participation and community engagement has been at the forefront of our work with Mehek Live workshops taking place at various community venues including care homes. Taught by our Artistic Director Aakash Odedra, Jayna Patel, musician Hiren Chate and Moving Together, elders have expanded their skills in Kathak dance, djembe drumming and storytelling with dramaturg Karthika Naïr. Thanks to an incredible one of a kind Nationally Significant Project grant from Arts Council England, our work with Mehek Live will continue into 2024. We also continue to run our weekly Dance & Health classes for women aged 50+ and more recently have created new classes at Wesley Hall to further engage members in our young community.
Proud to continue our training of the next generation of practitioners, we launched our intensive dance program ROOTS alongside four other industry giants in the summer to provide a space for pre and early professional dancers where they can develop their practice, learn from renowned choreographers and expand their industry connections. As a further commitment to our future artists, we offered scholarships to a select cohort of five dancers to give them a pathway through the program and help them thrive.
We remain committed to our three pillars as outlined above and look forward to creating future plans for the company that revolve around these all important values.
