Ramya S. Kapadia is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist & educator in the fields of  Bharatanatyam dance, Carnatic music (South Indian classical dance & music forms), visual art (Warli tribal art from Western India) and writing (children’s fiction). Ramya has toured all over the United States & abroad to present Bharatanatyam solo & ensemble works. She also regularly provides vocal accompaniment to dancers around the world and composes music for their productions. ​

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Ramya has Master’s degrees in Medical Physics and Neuroscience but pursues the arts full time now. She runs the Natyarpana School of Dance & Music, through which she shares the rich traditions of Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam across the USA. She is a Teaching Artist with the Durham and United Arts Councils, Arts Access and the Tennessee Arts Commission. She also serves as an adjudicator for the National Dance Education Organization. Through these affiliations, she is pursuing research to integrate the principles of her 2000-year old form with the STEAM curriculum in schools, emphasizing accessibility to children with special needs.

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She received the Ella Pratt Emerging Artist Award from the Durham Arts Council in 2010, the Choreography Fellowship from the North Carolina Dance Alliance in 2016 and an Artist Support Grant from the NC Arts Council in 2020. She served on the Advisory Committee of the “Dance at the Van Dyke” series at NC Dance Project (2019-2022) and was Associate Artistic Director and Outreach Director at Prakriti Dance, MD (2014-2021). She continues to serve on the advisory board of Indian music and dance presenting organizations - the Leela Foundation and the South Indian Fine Arts Academy in NC and the Knoxville Indian Classical Music Group in Knoxville, TN. More recently she has joined the Loghaven Residency host committee in Knoxville, TN.

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She has been commissioned by Roopa Cultural Arts (2024), the American Dance Festival (2022), Durham Independent Dance Artists (2018, 2019), ISKCON (2015), Samskrita Bharati (2013, 2014, 2015) and Hum Sub (2012) to produce new works that reflect the global nature of of Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music as she perceives them. She has also been an artist in residence at Keshet Maker’s Space, NM, Kinetic Works, NC and the Croft Residency, MI.

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In 2019, she received the Public Space Project award from Downtown Durham Inc., which resulted in a Warli mural that reflected Durham’s changing landscape from the 1600s to the present. Her Warli artwork has been a part of the Black History Month exhibits at the Knoxville Art Alliance. She also published her first book “Taikamaa & the Twin Stars” in 2023. 

 

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Ramya believes that art can and should tell stories that move audiences to becoming better and more compassionate human beings. The collaborators in her works are artists, scientists, literary scholars and philosophers who all share her vision of creating a better world through art. For her work in bringing communities together through the arts, she was awarded the Women of Inspiration AwardTM in Arts and Entertainment across USA & Canada by the Universal Women’s Network in 2023. She is grateful to her many mentors for providing her with rich and varied experiences in the arts.