About Us
Sudhaaya Introduction
Sudhaaya Dance Foundation was registered in the year 2005 as a non-profit company under Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act with the objective of strengthening the presence of traditional arts and to highlight their relevance in contemporary times. Its path is guided by the artistic vision of Shagun Butani, an acclaimed performer of Odissi and Seraikella Chhau.
The plethora of arts that abound in our culture can bring about a profound change from the inside out. Armed with a firm belief in their power to transform, Sudhaaya Dance Foundation has, since its inception in 2005 taken small but definitive steps to fulfill its objectives. Over the last decade, the many who have been associated with its work have carried this message forward through classes, lectures, workshops, museum walks, seminars, and performances. Through the resource of CSR support Sudhaaya Dance Foundation has undertaken projects that have used the narrative powers of traditional art forms and have provided employment opportunities to artist communities.
Preserving Tradition
Sudhaaya Dance Foundation functions on the premise that the arts in tradition were always nurtured by the community and sustained by its connection to people, lives, nature, environment…to all that matters in the celebration of life. The constant endeavour thus is to make these a vibrant part of our contemporary culture.
Directors
Advisory Board Members
Meet Our Directors
Shagun Butani
GAYATRI JAYAL
About Shagun Butani
Shagun Butani is an acclaimed exponent of Orissi and Seraikella Chhau. She has performed, conducted workshops and lecture-demonstrations extensively across India and the world. Credited to be one of the few women performers of Seraikella Chhau in the country, she was a part of the core team that prepared the dossier on Chhau for the Government of India, for it to be inscribed by UNESCO in its list of elements representing the world’s intangible cultural heritage.
She founded Sudhaaya Dance Foundation to share her passion for the arts in tradition.
Multi-Faceted, she has written scripts for films on dance and regularly lectures to introduce people to India’s performing traditions, inherent symbolisms, and the vital connection the arts make to the Indian way of life, its religions and philosophies. She has been a docent at The
National Museum, New Delhi since 2013 and is a certified Yoga instructor through Ministry Of Ayush, Government of India.
An impassioned teacher, she has initiated many into the profound beauty of Odissi. She continues to teach students while strengthening her own practice, that aspires to delve deeper in her understanding of the body, to find its spiritual source that must underline the power to express.
About Gayatri Jayal
Gayatri Jayal focuses on developing technology solutions like chatbots and mobile applications to improve health outcomes in low and middle-income countries. Currently she works at Dimagi as Director of Consumer Innovations. Previously, she worked in education in India and Lesotho. In India, working with Hippocampus Learning Centres in Bangalore, she managed the development and expansion of an affordable math program for elementary students, extending its reach to 24 villages. In Lesotho, she taught at the St. Rodrigue school for girls in the village of Raleqheka as a Grinnell College graduate fellow. Gayatri holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Grinnell College and an MSc in Demography from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She has been Director at Sudhaaya Dance Foundation since 2021. An association that she keenly embraces because of a deep interest in the arts and the welfare of marginalized artist communities in India.
Our Advisory Board Members
Anurupa Roy
She is an Indian puppeteer, puppet designer, and director of puppet theater. Roy sees puppetry as a blend of plastic and performing arts, integrating sculptures, masks, materials, and narratives with music, movement, and theater, where humans and puppets are co-actors.
She founded Katkatha in 1998, which became the Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust in 2006. Roy has directed over 15 shows for children and adults, from the Ramayana and Mahabharata to Shakespearean comedy and the Humayun-nama, touring Europe, Japan, and South Asia.
Her work includes using puppets for psychosocial interventions in conflict areas like Kashmir, Sri Lanka, and Manipur, and raising awareness about HIV/AIDS and gender issues among youth and women. She received the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar in Puppetry (2006) and has been a visiting faculty at UCLA and an Artist in Residence at Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council.
Malvika Bajaj Saini
A conservation architect, Malvika is passionate about research, heritage awareness, and community initiatives. She has co-authored and edited publications on heritage management for INTACH and coordinated their pan-India initiative, ‘State of Built Heritage of India: Case of the Unprotected.’ Her work includes conservation, dissemination activities, collaborations, publications, and hands-on workshops.
Her recent projects include conserving vernacular clusters of weaver homes, havelis, baolis, and temples. She has served as part of the Secretariat to the Advisory Committee on World Heritage Matters for India and as a consultant for the WMF-MP State Archaeology partnership Monuments Project at Orchha, Madhya Pradesh.
Additionally, Malvika is a consultant for the Youth-led Nature-Culture Living Labs in India, which are interactive modules designed to foster stewardship in children from marginalized communities.
Niraja Gopal Jayal
Niraja Gopal Jayal is the Avantha Chair and Professor of Politics at King’s India Institute, King’s College London, and was recently a Centennial Professor at The London School of Economics. She was previously a Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Jayal authored “Citizenship and Its Discontents,” which won the 2015 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize, and “Citizenship Imperilled: India’s Fragile Democracy.” She delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures at Oxford and served as Vice-President of the American Political Science Association. She has held visiting appointments at Princeton, Melbourne, and EHESS, Paris.
Bimal Julka
Bimal Julka , a name well known in Government, is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1979 batch belonging
to the Madhya Pradesh Cadre. Four decades of service in the
Government at both state and national levels have contributed to a stellar career graph. In the latter years of his career, Mr. Julka held key
positions in the Ministries of Defense and Finance. At the pinnacle of his
career, he became Secretary to Government of India in the Ministry of
Information & Broadcasting.
An exemplary service record led to his appointment as Information
Commissioner at the Central Information Commission and culminated
his career as the Chief Information Commissioner of India. Currently he
is connected to many companies in an advisory capacity.
The work of Sudhaaya, illuminates contexts and connections, takes us back to the sourceand makes us alive in the present. Through its work the foundation invites the spectator to go beyond the surface, to delve deep into a language of universal symbols and to truly participate in the rituals of art that India so generously offers.
Contact :
- Write Us
- Contactus@sudhaaya.com
