Ariaki Dandawate grew up in a deeply musical household, where rhythm and melody were part of daily life. When her parents enrolled her in Kathak classes at the age of seven, they unknowingly set her on a lifelong path. Her training has been shaped by Pandita Archana Joglekar, whose lineage spans the Banaras, Lucknow, and Jaipur gharanas—an inheritance that grounds Ariaki in a rare breadth of Kathak technique and philosophy.

She has performed at major platforms including the Rubin Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Battery Dance Festival, and Lincoln Center, bringing Kathak to diverse audiences and contemporary contexts. Alongside her primary practice, Ariaki has also spent the last six years training in Odissi under Guru Bijayini Satpathy, a study that has added new dimension, clarity, and sensitivity to her movement vocabulary.

For Ariaki, being an artist means holding both history and possibility at once—“embodying the past and future of humanity’s creative expression,” as she describes it. Her professional goals reflect that ethos: to share Kathak with broader audiences, to present its depth on major stages, and to create work that remains rooted in tradition while welcoming cross-cultural resonance and experimentation.

Outside the studio, Ariaki is a Ph.D. student in Computational Biology at Weill Cornell Graduate School, researching the complex mechanisms of cancer. She sees her artistic and scientific practices as deeply intertwined—the precision, curiosity, and expansive thinking demanded in her research continually shaping the way she understands rhythm, structure, and movement.

In the coming year, Ariaki is developing a new choreographic work that meditates on Kathak’s layered histories and the multiplicity of voices within the form. Exploring belonging, contradiction, and transformation, she aims to experiment with new soundscapes and arrangements to create a work that honors the lineage she carries while carving out her own vocabulary within it.