Workshop

Montreal, April 3rd 2008 - Festival Accès Asie is honoured to welcome Hemalayaa Behl, choreographer, dancer and yoga instructor on May 22nd 2008, for a workshop on Indian and Bollywood dance. This workshop open to everyone is an opportunity to plunge into the colourful and fascinating universe of East Indian musical comedy and to learn the techniques. A discovery that seduces millions of spectators yearly. With its bewitching melodies, it is as contagious as it is spirited.

Bollywood film is a fascinating mix of overlapping stories that are steeped in spectacular music and dance and to those who are unfamiliar; Bollywood film is rising quickly in popularity. Renowned for lavish dance pieces, Bollywood film influenced Hemalayaa Behl at a very young age in already imagining herself as a dancing star. From a dream to reality, she sidestepped the usual dance workshops in Canada and in the US and combined her knowledge of traditional Indian dance with her practices in yoga offering a complete and enriching experience.

Hemalayaa Behl was born in Toronto in 1974 as a second generation Canadian with origins from the south of India. Having come from a family concerned with religious and cultural values, Hemalayaa was raised at a very early age in Indian dance and yoga. After a teenage rebellion and having left for Vancouver, she soon devoted herself seriously to studying spirituality and yoga following world-renowned masters such as Shiva Rea and Jeffrey Armstrong and then became a dancer and a choreographer in Indian dance.

Hemalayaa Behl presently teaches meditation and yoga in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. In order to better distribute her classes, she produced four DVD’s that demonstrates dance techniques and yoga practices, Yoga for Urban Living (2001), Dosha Yoga (2005), Yoga for Young Bodies (2006) and lastly Bollywood Dance Workout that combines physical exercise with Indian dance. She writes a monthly bulletin called "Yoga and the City" with musings on the yogic life.

Thursday May 22 at 7 p.m.
SEVA
5244, rue St.Urbain
Cost: $40

Press contact: Olga Pudelko (514) 570-0931