My name is Vidya Patel, I am a Kathak dancer and an alumnus of the Yuva Gati Centre for Advanced Training Programme.
Born, raised in a British Gujarati household in Handsworth- I began training in Indian classical dance from a young age and continued my training with focus on Kathak, through the Yuva Gati CAT Programme and by guru Sujata Banerjee.
Recently, I have been developing my own research through the Developing Your Creative Practise grant, and was part of the Pagrav Oxygen development programme. In 2015, I represented the South Asian Category in the Grand Finals of the inaugural BBC Young Dancer 2015 at Sadler’s Wells, since, and have now paved a career in the dance industry through performance, collaboration and her choreographic work, and was recently chosen to be one of four Sadler’s Wells Young Associate artists 2020- 2022
In my early career I was invited as a guest artist to join the prestigious Richard Alston Dance Company for a new work in 2016, and I was absolutely thrilled to be nominated for the two categories for the National Dance Critic Circle award of ‘Emerging Artist’ and ‘Outstanding Female Performance’ (as Princess Maria Barbara’ in ‘An Italian in Madrid’ for Richard Alston Dance Company. Since then I have performed in international touring works created by critically acclaimed artists Gary Clarke, Thick & Tight, Hetain Patel, Sujata Banerjee and Akademi, Sampad Arts, performed in the late Pandit Ravi Shankar’s “Sukanya” with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
My choreographic work has been on the stages of Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells, Trinity Laban and across the UK, through commissions for the 3rd years Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, Trinity Laban CAT Programme, FABRIC Yuva Gati Programme and for post graduate dance company Emergence led by Salford University and Joss Arnott Dance.
My time at CAT was extremely influential on my dance journey. I successfully auditioned to be part of CAT at the age of 12, which was also the very first year the programme had started in 2008. I remember being so happy to have got through and really intrigued to see what the programme would be like.
The Yuva Gati Strand which is delivered by FABRIC in partnership with Sampad, is the only South Asian strand in the UK, which meant that our intensives were different than having weekly sessions like the contemporary strand CAT students. We would meet in the holidays for intensives which lasted for two or three days concluding the year with a five day summer intensive leading up to the annual show case.
On my first day I remember seeing so many other dancers my age and making friends wasn’t a problem as we all had one thing already in common. We were introduced to our subject tutors, Sujata Banerjee and Anusha Subramanyam who would be leading our Kathak sessions and devising our Individual Training Plans (ITPs). Our ITP would take place at the end of every term set by the subject tutors. This was really beneficial because it gave me a bespoke plan of how to carry on training and practicing in order to improve termly according to my weaknesses and strengths and set an ultimate goal to strive for. This would be assessed and was discussed with the home tutor to help maintain and help the improvement. Goal setting part of ITP’S really helped me to realize that I needed to take more responsibility for my growth and improvement by monitoring my own improvement.
The programme presented the opportunity to have workshops with a variety of guest artist including Nahid Saddiqui, Urja Desai, Abhay Shankar Mishra, Natalia Hildner, Ash Mukherjee, Santosh Nair, Subhash Viman Gorania, Toby Norman- Wright, Maria Blundell-Palethorpe, Kristina and Sade Allyene, as well as the constant support and guidance from subject tutors. As well training in the dance style of Kathak, I also explored contemporary and other dance forms from South Asian origin. Being encouraged to explore in creative sessions with a variety of guest artists definitely helped me to be more open minded through being stimulated through different methods and techniques of being creative. Opportunities and performances given by the CAT scheme were very influential to my performance experience as a young person.
Before graduating from the CAT scheme I was presented with the opportunity to go to Kolkata, India to learn Kathak from Luna Poddar and Sandip Mallick for under a month. This experience confirmed my choice of wanting to take up dance as a profession. It was here I also learnt a solo to perform at the CAT end of year showcase, and was one of the solos I performed throughout the BBC Young Dancer competition, where I got to perform at the Grand Finals at Saddlers Wells main stage.
Spending time in the CAT dance intensives we had the privilege of rehearsing and training in world class facilities, in beautiful studios, with constant support from CAT tutors and staff. The relationships created, thanks to the programme, are still with me today and in my work as a professional dance artist I maintain connections with artists in the industy who I first connected with on the programme.