Nateshwar Dance Academy has collaborated with choreographer Shampa Sonthalia in 2013 and 2014 to create two memorable Fashion & Dance extravaganzas for the Sunday Times Eastern Bridal Fair. 2015 promises to be another year of grandeur and spectacular entertainment. Shampa is an inspiration to many dancers. Join us we journey through her repertoire of work.

Shampa Gopikrishna [Sonthalia] is the daughter of legendary kathak exponent, the late Natraj Shri Gopikrishna. Performing since the age of 4 and having Kathak as her legacy, she decided to further her dance knowledge by training under choreographer Terence Lewis, thus incorporating in her repertoire modern,contemporary,jazz,hip hop,Latin American styles like salsa, samba, zouk, waltz, paso doble, bachata and cha cha while widening her knowledge and training in Indian dances like bollywood,mayurbhanj chhau, kallaripayatu, bharatanatyam, odissi and various other indian folk styles. She is also trained in aerial styles including silk, ring, box, rope, bungee and other harness and non-harness related apparatus.

Using this to her advantage, she has made a style and a mark of her own which is reflected in her choreography and dances in “Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa” (the Indian version of “Dancing With The Stars) season 4,5-which she won with her celebrity partner Gurmeet Choudhary in September 2012 and 7 which she won most recently with her partner Ashish Sharma in September 2014, thus making her the only choreographer in the history of JDJ in India to have won twice!!!

She is a versatile dancer and choreographer, she loves to take on challenges, hence likes to work with thematic restrictions and new avant-garde ideas and mediums. In the recent past, she has co-choreographed the song “Ang Laga de” for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s last film, “Ramleela” and “Malang” for Yashraj Films’ “Dhoom 3”, a fiction dance based show for Disney called “Shake it up Mumbai”, various acts for fiction dance show “D3” on Channel V, for television dance reality shows like “Nach Baliye” and “Dance India Dance” to name a few.She was also Director of Choreography for “dancewithmadhuri.com”-an online dance academy which is the brainchild of Bollywood diva and judge on 4 seasons of “Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa”, Madhuri Dixit, where she planned and structured the teaching module and the syllabus, find different choreographers to teach their styles, and supervise the lessons during the shoot.

She has choreographed songs for 4 feature films-“Junooniyat” produced by T-Series, “Waiting” featuring Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin and “Neerja”,a biopic featuring Sonam Kapoor,directed by Ram Madhvani and produced by Fox Studios. She recently choreographed “Ab Tohe”, a soulful duet and co-choreographed “Pinga”, a regional Indian folk dance for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s next epic-“Bajirao Mastani”. In January 2015 ,she was invited to be on the post of Associate Choreographer for the international talent-based reality show “Asia’s got Talent” (a Fremantle Prod.)which aired on AXN.

In the latter half of 2014, she was invited by the Texas Christian University(TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas and the Vertigo Dance Company in Jerusalem,Israel to teach Bollywood Master Classes to the Professional Program students which was a roaring success. In July 2015, she is invited to the festival “Camping” in Paris,France to do the same. Currently, she is also conceptualizing and choreographing a series of YouTube videos for the Project “SufiFest” for the record company Saregama.

Having performed and taught in countries across the world viz USA, UK, Germany, Austria, Egypt, South Africa, France, Spain, Israel, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, U.A.E to name a few, working with reputed choreographers like Terence Lewis, Remo D’souza, Longinus Fernandes, Saroj Khan and choreographing for celebrities like Madhuri Dixit, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, Jacqueline Fernandes, Anoushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Yana Gupta, Malaika Arora Khan, Dia Mirza and Yami Gautam, she has her eyes set on the international stage and wishes to dazzle the audience worldwide with her unique style and aesthetic sense of choreography.

See you at the Sunday Times Eastern Bridal Fair.