Draft:Bageshree Vaze

Bageshree Vaze
Born	Pune, Maharashtra, India
Education	Bachelor's in Journalism (Honours) - Carleton University, 1994; Master's in Arts (Dance) - York University, 2000
Occupation(s)	Hindustani classical vocalist, Kathak dancer
Organization	Pratibha Arts
Spouse	Vineet Vyas (2004-present)
Website	https://bageshree.com

Bageshree Vaze is an Indo-Canadian Hindustani classical vocalist, Indian classical dance artist and writer. Named an MTV India ‘Ubbharta Sitara’ (rising star) in February 2004, Vaze is known for her recordings of original and adapted songs for dance performance and teaching. She is the founding Artistic Director of Pratibha Arts in Toronto, where she promotes and presents emerging South Asian Canadian and culturally-diverse artists.

Early life and education

Vaze was born in Pune, Maharashtra, India to Damodar and Pratibha Vaze, both physicians, who immigrated to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1970s. Born into a family of Indian classical music lovers, Vaze was named after the popular raga. She was introduced to the South Indian classical dance style of Bharatanatyam in the early 1980s when the St. John’s Hindu Temple hosted Indian dance classes by Menaka Thakkar of Toronto. Vaze pursued further training in this style later with Sudha Chandra Sekhar in Michigan, USA, completing her Arangetram (graduation recital) in 1988. She later trained in Mumbai, Maharashtra, with Guru T. K. Mahalingam Pillai on a Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute scholarship. While growing up in St. John’s, Vaze also began studying ragas and Hindustani (North Indian) classical vocal music with her father.

In 1989, Vaze won first prize in the Law Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador’s high school essay writing competition, which inspired her to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. She completed a Master's in Arts (Dance) at York University in 2000.

Career

In the early 1990s, Vaze began spending extended periods of time training in Indian classical dance and music. She trained in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi in Mumbai, and in 1998 began studying Kathak dance in New Delhi, after witnessing a performance by Pandit Birju Maharaj and his entourage at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1997. Says Vaze in ‘My Journey with Kathak’ published in Tarang magazine in Dec. 2022, “I had been fascinated with Kathak much before I saw it performed properly…from somewhere deep within my soul, I always felt I was meant to pursue Kathak. Since I was learning Hindustani (North Indian classical) vocal music, I felt more connected to Kathak because of its Hindustani aesthetic.” She subsequently studied Kathak with Pandit Jaikishan Maharaj, and his father, Pandit Birju Maharaj in New Delhi.

In 1996 Vaze moved to Toronto and began to collaborate with local musicians and dance artists, including the late Jahanara Akhlaq. Vaze realized how her spectrum of cultural influences in Newfoundland had come to shape her artistic vision. In ‘Another Dance History - Exploring South Asian Dance in St. John’s,’ published in the December 2023 issue of Dance Collection Danse magazine, she says, “The community was as culturally diverse as India itself (and continues to be), but with relatively small numbers, there was no opportunity to divide along linguistic or provincial lines. In metropolitan cities such as Toronto people from a particular Indian province congregate, but in [Newfoundland and Labrador] we had the opportunity to mix with a diversity of Indians. If I had grown up in Toronto my family would have likely mixed only with people from Maharashtra, the province from which we originate. Even if I had grown up in India, I doubt I would have studied South Indian classical dance. I feel incredibly lucky to have had this richness of experience, and whatever I know and love about Indian arts is a result of having grown up in [Newfoundland and Labrador].”

Music

Vaze’s Eastern and Western influences were evident in her first album Bageshree, produced in Toronto by Meiro Stamm and Andrew Hurlbut. Songs such as ‘Deewana’ and ‘Oh Meherebaan’ combine ragas, pop and electronica, as well as elements of classical music, such as Tabla bols and sargam (solfege). The album was released through Crescendo Records in India in 2004, and the video for ‘Deewana’ received wide airplay on MTV India. In 2006, the video won the ReelWorld Film Festival’s Outstanding Canadian Music Video award.

In 2007, Vaze began producing music for dance performance, adapting traditional and original compositions with modern production qualities. Says Vaze in ‘My Journey with Kathak’: “The greatest challenge for dance artists is how to access music. In the 1980s, Maharajji released an album of music for Kathak dance, which included his famous Kalavati Tarana (to this day many dancers perform on that song) but beyond this, there are virtually no commercially-available recordings for dance. Kathak presentation ideally features live musical accompaniment, but it is often untenable for dancers to engage musicians; dancers must have the financial resources to cover musicians’ fees, and there are a handful of full-time musicians who perform for Kathak dance outside of India. The only other option is to produce professional-level studio recordings, and this is also not feasible for dancers on a regular basis.” Tarana was recorded in New Delhi at Studio Synthesis and in Toronto at Toast and Jam Studios (formerly Keen Music). This album was released by Times Music in India in 2009 under the name Khanak, and the album was launched in New Delhi at the Ravi Shankar Institute for Music and Peace in March 2009, with Pandit Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar in attendance.

Vaze followed up these recordings with Avatar (9), Kalashree and the forthcoming Songs From The Temple. Her original compositions ‘Savitri’s Tarana’ and ‘Jhaptaal for Kathak’ feature on Vineet Vyas’ Satyam album released in 2022. These recordings are used by dancers around the world in performance and teaching of Kathak dance.

Dance and Choreographic Works

Since 2011, Vaze has choreographed and presented numerous dance works through Pratibha Arts in Toronto. Her works have been presented in major dance festivals in Canada such as CanAsian Dance, Dusk Dances and the Canada Dance Festival.

In 2010, Vaze began carving her vision of combining Indian classical dance with contemporary influences. Her mentorship by choreographers such as Denise Fujiwara and Christopher House have shaped her choreographic vision. In 2015, she was commissioned by DanceWorks to produce Paratopia which would prove to be a seminal work. In the chapter ‘Kathak in Canada - Classical and Contemporary’ published in Contemporary Musical Expressions in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), Margaret E. Walker writes of the production:

“It was Paratopia, the group work ending the evening, that broke new ground. In the darkened theatre, the performance began with the amplified sound of a metronome marking a steady beat. A male voice began to recite kathak bols, the oral notation syllables used for both dance movements and drum strokes: Dha - - - Dha - - - Dha tit dha - - - Dha - - - Dha tit dha - treke dha. Projected on the screen at the back of the stage, these syllables appeared in Devanagari script as they were articulated: धा - - - धा - - - धा तित धा - - - धा - - - धा तित धा - तृक धा |. Bageshree Vaze entered the stage dressed in a simple black dress rather than the usual colourful costume, veil, and jewelry. She was wearing sunglasses, ankle bells, and rendering the bols, which continued to be recited and to float across the screen, with her feet. As the recitation and her footwork became faster and more virtuosic, she moved through classical footwork patterns playing with sounds, patterns, rhythmic density, and crossrhythms, and finally settled into the well-known eight-beat pattern “takita takita dhinne.”

Until this point, although the sound and setting, including Vaze’s costume and the projected bols, were not what one would expect in a Kathak solo, Vaze’s dance technique and rhythmic choices were entirely in keeping with Kathak’s traditional vocabulary. She was then joined on stage by three more dancers, who were also wearing sunglasses and dressed in black. Danny Gomez, Danny McArthur, and Samantha Schleese are all Toronto-based professional dance artists and experts in multiple styles including hiphop, house, ballet, modern, contemporary, jazz, and types of ballroom dance. Joining Vaze in dancing the eight-beat pattern, which had taken on the characteristic of a rhythmic groove, they played with it, exploring its 3+3+2 ostinato with moves from their own dance vocabulary. As the four dancers then synchronized their movements, conforming to the classical Kathak footwork pattern for “takita takita dhinne” with which Vaze had begun, they were joined by another performer, beatboxer Cj Mairs, who uses the professional name Killabeatz.

The rhythmic energy that had been building through the performance increased even further as Killabeatz’s driving vocal percussion combined with the sounds of the tabla played by Vineet Vyas and the precise rhythms of Vaze’s feet and ankle bells. Sound and movement came to a climax as modern, urban, and jazz dance vocabularies mingled, then united with the performance’s overarching Kathak aesthetic, and philosophical quotes from T.S. Eliot, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen Hawking floated across the screen. The evening’s performance showed clearly how Vaze’s innovative work, while certainly aware of the aesthetics of modern or contemporary dance, stays faithful to the traditional movement vocabulary of classical Kathak and its musical structures.”

Vaze trains advanced-level Kathak artists in Pratibha Arts’ homebase of Toronto. In 2010 she was a recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award in Dance and in 2022 she was a co-recipient, along with Vineet Vyas of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Original Music Composition in the Dance Division.

Discography

• Bageshree (2002)
• Tarana (2007) - released as Khanak through Times Music in 2009
• Avatar (9) (2011)
• Ragas and Rhythms (2012)
• Kalashree (2019)
• Songs From the Temple (2025)

Personal life

Vaze has been married to Tabla artist Vineet Vyas since 2004. Their daughter Kalashree was born in 2007, and their son Vihaan was born in 2012.

External links

www.bageshree.com

www.pratibhaarts.com