Audience Choice
Best Presentation
Best Dancer
Outstanding Technical Achievement
Best Choreography
Widely known as the waacking ambassador and globe trotter, she is leading the way for Dance fusion and education. She has shared her unique dance blend to enthusiasts in 30 different countries across six continents, focusing on a mixture of Waacking, House, Hip-Hop, Dancehall, and Vogue.
She has launched the International Waack/Punk/Pose Festival (a.k.a. the Waackfest) in 2010. Ladies and Gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the waacking queen Kumari suraj!
Bala Devi Chandrashekar is a Bharatanatyam exponent, research scholar, and a passionate committed teacher of Bharatanatyam. Bala is know for her distinct scholarly style and takes on subjects based on ancient texts, backed by intense research, collaborates with renowned scholars in the respective fields, carving messages from scriptures relevant to the contemporary world and actively presenting across the world. Bala Devi's lineage is from a family of philosophers and literary scholars.
Bala through her classical dance strives to interpret ancient philosophical and spiritual concepts and presents in a classicism that is always contemporary in interpretation and communicates across cultures, All her production are accompanied by world class music. Bala started her initial training under Guru Jayalakshmi Narayanan in Hyderabad and then went onto learn with Dr Padma Subrahmanyam in Chennai. Dr Padma Subrahmanyam has awarded the titles " Bharata Nrtya Seva Mani" and " Nrtyasali- completed course in 108 Karanas" to Bala Devi Chandrashekar. Extremely passionate about teaching, and as a Professor of Practice & as the Artistic Director of SPNAPA Academy of Performing Arts, Princeton, New Jersey, she imparts valuable knowledge to her many dedicated students.
Bala constantly works on developing and perfecting the style that would be seamless and fluid while yet retaining the precision, power and purity of line - typical of classical dance. As a Professor of Practice, Bala is constantly developing “Performing studies” in collaboration with Theater and Dance, History, Philosophy, Linguistic anthropology and South Asian Departments of various Universities in the United States and served as Fellow and Artist in Residence at The Carl A fields Center@Princeton University.
Bala is one of the few Bharatanatyam artist worldwide to have released eight critically acclaimed dance production based on her extensive research. They are Nandanar Charithram, MLV favorites, Krishna Arpanam, Uddhava Gita - Lord Krishna's last message, Vishwam - The Omnipresent, Tripura - Divine Feminine, Karna - Destiny's Child, Brihadeeswara - Form to formless through the eyes of a Devaradiyal. All of these works are accompanied by world class music and have been produced in digital format.
