By Sonia Mansoor and Sangeeta Kumar

The heat of a late summer afternoon was offset by a cool East River breeze and the shade of the concrete rise of the FDR drive at Solar One's first annual solar-powered South Asian music and dance festival, Sun to Stars.

The seed for Sun to Stars was planted by Tamar Rogoff, the Artistic Director of Solar One. Tamar is a dancer and choreographer and spent some time in India learning Bharat Natyam. She was inspired by the traditional all-night music concerts held along the Ganges.

While increasing accessibility, presenting dance outdoors in the city can be challenging because a performance competes with a multitude of distractions from traffic, weather and audience inattention.

The Parul Shah Dance Company overrode these diversions effortlessly with their rendition of "Samanvay" (Harmony). Choreographed by the legendary Kumudini Lakhia and reworked by Parul Shah, the piece uses nritta (pure dance) to highlight the intricacies of Kathak technique, focusing on chakkars (turns), thaats (warm-ups), and gatchaals. Gatchaals are different gaits in Kathak that illustrate both the subtlety and sharpness of the form. In "Samanvay" the gatchaals do not have a specific story attached to them, but evoke a mood and ambiance which, according to Reena Shah, one of the dancers of the company, hint at shringar or adornment.

Set to a haunting music composition by Atul Desai, the three dancers used the classical grammar of Kathak, sensual fluidity of movement and off-centre formations to create intricate patterns against the backdrop of city skyscrapers.

The performance lingered long after we returned to the rhythm of the city.

Dancer Biographies:

Parul Shah is a Kathak dancer and choreographer whose work is expanding beyond cultural boundaries. Trained under Smt. Kumudini Lakhia at the Kadamb Center for Dance and Music in India, Parul's work includes traditional solo pieces alongside contemporary group choreographies. With an M.A. in dance education from Columbia University, Parul has been teaching for over 10 years.

Reena Shah began her Kathak training with Parul Shah in New York and spent two years on a Fulbright grant studying at the Kadamb Center for Dance and Music in India. She has been preforming with the Parul Shah Dance Company for the past five years. She is alos the author of "Movement in Stills: the Life and Dance of Kumudini Lakhia", a biography published in 2005.

Ammr Vandal began learning Kathak in Lahore, Pakistan, her hometown under the tutelage of Maharaj Ghulam Hussein and Naheed Siddiqui. She has been performing with the Parul Shah Dance Company for the past five years.