Aniruddha Knight

"Sometimes I can't sleep at night thinking about my reponsibility. I think I was born for this task," says dancer Aniruddha Knight of his mission to share his artistic legacy as a ninth generation performer from southern India's oldest continuous family style of music and dance. What a legacy it is – Knight is the only grandchild of, and the cultural heir to, Balasaraswati, the legendary performer of bharata natyam, a rich melding of dance, music, and theatre which is noted for the beauty of its abstract movements, rhythmic complexity of its footwork, and improvised interpretation of the poetry performed as music with the dance.

Balasaraswati was a leading figure across cultures; in western dance, Martha Graham, Margo Fonteyn, and Merce Cunningham were among her ardent fans, and when she danced at the Jacob's Pillow festival, Ted Shawn proclaimed, "We are in the presence of greatness." Her grandson Aniruddha is both embodying her repertoire and forging pathways in his own right, with Newsweek magazine naming him one of 16 "Daylight's Children," young Indians "expected to influence the course of cultures, politics, and economics in India during the next 50 years." With both fresh vision and deep artistic roots, Knight and an ensemble of distringuished musicians imbue this rich hereditary style with immediacy, certainty, and expressiveness.