The Leela Dance Collective is a powerful community that connects the roots of India’s culture, arts, and spirituality with finding true joy and the human spirit. Join us for this virtual exclusive conversation that looks through the lens of Indian arts to delve into the importance of pursuing art in your life, and why supporting Indian art matters so much.

Minoo Gupta has long-been a supporter and believer that art and nature are what makes us whole. She is an enthusiastic supporter of the Leela Dance Collective, and a believer in their powerful community that connects the roots of India’s culture, arts, and spirituality with finding true joy and the human spirit.

She is the senior director of engineering and customer experience at Citrix, and is a highly seasoned, tech savvy and customer focused executive working in the silicon valley since 1987. Minoo serves as President of Foundation for Excellence (www.ffe.org), a non-profit that enables academically brilliant and economically underprivileged students in India to complete their higher education in Engineering or Medicine through a scholarship Program.

Rachna Nivas is an artist, choreographer, educator, and entrepreneur in Indian classical dance, bringing a relevant voice to Kathak. Deemed “charismatic” and “revelatory” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Rachna is a fierce and passionate performer, and a distinguished torchbearer of legendary master Pandit Chitresh Das’ treasured lineage. She is a founding artist of the Leela Dance Collective, a women-led and artist-led company, producing powerful works through the collective creativity of trailblazers in Kathak. Her latest collaborative work, SPEAK, brings together leading women in kathak and tap, bridging Indian and African-American art and heritage.