Jayantee Paine-Ganguly
Jayantee
Paine-Ganguly is a versatile dancer and choreographer with training
in several different dance styles--including Odissi, Kathak, and Mohiniyattam--from prominent exponents of those styles.
An
avid student of dance, Jayantee has hopscotched back and forth between
America and India to pursue her dance training. She learned the basics of
dance from her first guru, her mother, at the age of four. Later, Jayantee
began her formal training with lyrical dance in the Rabindrik style (of
Rabindranath Tagore) with Ramgopal Bhattacharya in Kolkata and performed as a
member of Ananda Shankar's contemporary dance troupe there. At that time,
Jayantee also studied Odissi with Murulidhar Majhi.
After
coming to the United States, Jayantee took up Kathak with Chitresh Das
of San Francisco. She traveled frequently to India to continue
her dance training in Odissi, to study Kathak with Bandana Sen of
Kolkata and Saswati Sen of New Delhi, and to study Mohiniyattam with Sridevi Rajan of Kerala. In
1996, Jayantee quit her day job and moved to India for several years to
study Odissi more intensively with Kumkum Mohanty at the Odissi
Research Center in Bhubaneshwar. There, she performed at the
prestigious Konark Festival.
Upon
returning to America, Jayantee founded the
Konark Dance School and the Jayantika Dance Company. She received
a master's degree in performing arts and dance from American
University. Currently, Jayantee teaches Odissi, Kathak, and
Mohiniyattam, as well as dances of Bengal, contemporary dance, and folk
dance at her dance school. Jayantee also performs widely and
conducts lectures about Indian classical dance throughout the
Washington,
D.C., area. She is a board member of the Indian Dance Educators
Association of the greater metropolitan area (IDEA).
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