User:Mchadda/UMDMoksha

UMD Moksha is the University of Maryland's premier Indian Classical Dance team. It ranks as one of the top Indian Classical Dance teams in the nation after placing first at Laasya 2010. It was founded in the Spring of 2007 by Shwetha Manoharan and Swetha Yeldandi, two students who wished to create a unified team of strong dancers from various styles of Indian Classical Dance including Bharathanatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, and Kathak.

History
Shwetha Mahoharan, Moksha's co-founder, learned Bharathanatyam since the age of five. While attending the University of Maryland, she felt there had to be more students that shared the same passion for dance as she did. Her vision was to create a unified team of strong dancers from various styles of Indian Classical Dance, be it Bharathanatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Kathak, etc. Unfortunately, some styles are better represented than others, but what was ultimately envisioned for Moksha was a talented group, willing to bring the art to a mainstream audience, heighten awareness of the lost form, and modify it to contemporary music and themes. Manoharan met Swetha Yeldandi, Moksha's other co-founder, at another dance event she helped organize in conjunction with Association for India’s Development in 2007. They both realized they shared the same interest in forming a competitive team at the University of Maryland, and thus began brainstorming names for the group. They came across the word “Moksha,” which in Sanskrit means “liberation.” No other word was more suitable for the team they had molded: the three other dancers we recruited in the beginning shared our passion and had the ability to convert dance into a form of artistic liberation, stepping beyond the boundaries of the art and expressing it in contemporary rhythms. The small team of five expanded to a team of ten strong dancers by the following semester and has now created a positive reputation on campus.