Kathak dancer, choreographer, and educator Parul Shah has spent over twenty-seven years creating work that confronts cultural narratives and hierarchies that diminish the dignity of South Asian women. Drawing upon the rich tradition of North Indian classical dance, Kathak, Shah’s choreography embodies resistance, artistry, and personal agency. Her works tell stories of women pushing against boundaries, women who have been forgotten, and whose labor and voices have too often been erased.

Trained in India by the groundbreaking late choreographer Kumudini Lakhia, she has developed a distinctive movement language that expands Indian dance technique while uprooting male-dominated and Eurocentric narratives. Her choreographic works have been presented at major venues, including City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Asia Society in New York City, among others. She continues to build upon the storytelling roots of Indian classical dance, exploring questions of belonging, identity, and cultural negotiation that shape her experience as a South Asian American artist.

Equally dedicated to community and education, she engages with students in higher education and community centers while pursuing a doctoral degree in Dance Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on disrupting dominant narratives and using historical inquiry and performance to foster agency. Shah’s teaching practice emphasizes embodied experience and critical dialogue, inviting students to challenge inherited “norms” and reimagine themselves through counter-narratives.