Sasha Ashwini

Ashwini is a Montreal-based contemporary dance artist and creative researcher whose practice bridges postmodern movement and the South Indian classical form of bharatanatyam. As a fourth-generation Indian-Singaporean and first-generation Canadian, her work is deeply shaped by questions of migration—its ruptures, inheritances, and transformative possibilities.

Her artistic lineage includes her paternal grandfather, Perumal Singamuthu, a Carnatic musician from Tanjore, Tamil Nadu, whose devotion to the traditional arts formed an early foundation for artistic practice and performance. She trained under Smt. Pushpa Ramraj in Burnaby, and in 2018 was invited to apprentice with acclaimed bharatanatyam artist Rama Vaidyanathan, with whom she remains a dedicated disciple.

Ashwini holds an MFA in Dance from York University, where she furthered her research on how bharatanatyam captures time through cyclical embodiment and rhythmic intelligence. Her choreographic work spans both ensemble and intimate forms. In 2022, she created Art of Time, an ensemble production for eight dancers exploring temporal structure through a postmodern lens. In 2023, she co-choreographed Home l a n d, a duet investigating memory, belonging, and the body as a vessel of intergenerational migration stories. The work asked: How does land shape us? Where is home? Through themes of sisterhood, motherhood, longing, and resilience, the piece excavated feminine power and the healing of maternal lineages across generations.

Her training also includes ballet with Loreli Skinner at The Dance Centre and extensive study in contact improvisation at EDAM, where she completed the 2023 scholarship program under the mentorship of Peter Bingham.

Rooted in lineage yet forward-looking in form, Ashwini’s artistic practice seeks to unearth collective histories, generate embodied questions, and expand the possibilities of contemporary performance. Currently in development, her solo work CROSSING DEEP WATERS explores identity shaped by what is lost, carried, or transformed across geographies and generations. In April 2025, Ashwini was honoured by DanceHouse Vancouver and the Hawthorne Foundation with the second-place Louise Bentall Award for Emerging Choreographers to support her ongoing creative research.