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Siri
Rama is an Indian dancer based in Singapore. She is proficient in
the styles of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi and has given numerous
recitals and lecture-demonstrations in these styles all over the
world. An innovative choreographer, Siri has a large repertoire
of solo items in both styles; she has also choreographed several
full length dance dramas. She runs her own dance school in Mumbai,
has taught for seven years in Hong Kong, and has trained over a
hundred dance students, several of whom have won prizes at prestigious
competitions, and four of whom have recently given arangetram performances.
In May 2000, Siri completed a PhD degree on dance sculpture, under
the guidance of Dr. Rajeshwari Ghose, at the Department of Fine
Arts, University of Hong Kong.

Siri started learning classical dance at the
age of four, gave her first full length dance performance at the
age of six, started her dance school in Mumbai, the Kanaka Sabha
Centre for Performing Arts, at the age of fourteen, choreographed
and conducted her first full length dance drama, Ramayana, at the
age of fifteen, went on her first foreign solo performance tour
to Germany at the age of twenty, and conducted her first arangetram
performance at the age of twenty five. She has won several prizes
in dance competitions throughout her school and college years, and
was awarded titles of Singar Mani by the Sur Singar Samsad in Mumbai
and Nritya Shivali by the Shivali Cultural Society, New Delhi. Archana
Nrityalaya felicitated her in 1991 for being an outstanding dance
teacher.
Siri
has performed full length Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi concerts
in several cities all over the world, including several cities in
India, the USA, Hong Kong, Germany and Dubai. She has also staged
several dance dramas in Mumbai and Hong Kong, notably the Ramayana,
a commissioned production of Buddha Charita, a dance adaptation
of Girish Karnad's Hayavadana and Tyagaraja's Nauka Charitam. Siri's
dance troupe at the Kanaka Sabha Centre was invited to perform for
the Indian Prime Minister at an international conference in New
Delhi.
Siri Rama has a special interest in the interaction
of dance and technology. She was invited to choreograph and perform
a full length Indian dance recital to the accompaniment of submissions
to the International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong in 1996;
she also participated in the World Wide Simultaneous Dance Event
on the internet in 1997 and in an experimental webcast of a solo
dance interpretation of the story of the Silappadikaram at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Siri is also extremely interested in the depiction
of dance in the sculptures in Indian temples. In November 2000,
she was awarded PhD for her thesis on "Dance Sculpture as a
Visual Motif of the Sacred and the Secular: a Study of the Belur
Cennakesava and Halebidu Hoysalesvara Temples," under the guidance
of Dr. Rajeshwari Ghose, at the University of Hong Kong.

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