16th American Natya Festival

A Celebration of Purpose and Perseverance

The sixteenth edition of the American Natya Festival, a celebration of Indian classical dances curated and envisioned by dancer and cultural promoter Prasanna Kasthuri, continues to stand as a significant diasporic platform for Indian classical dance. What began as a humble effort to create space for serious Indian performance traditions in the heart of the American Midwest has now matured into a thoughtfully organized, three-day festival of impressive breadth and artistic integrity.
This year’s festival, held at Clayton High School Auditorium, St. Louis from June 13 to 15, was not merely a series of performances, it was a reaffirmation of identity, memory, and intergenerational commitment. From young learners in their first steps on stage to mature practitioners of nuanced abhinaya and choreographic clarity, the festival offered a compelling cross-section of the Indian classical dance landscape as it flourishes outside the subcontinent. In the diaspora, where cultural memory often contends with displacement and reinvention, the Natya Festival becomes more than an event, it is a movement built on vision, persistence, and deep cultural yearning.