PROFILE

Aarohi SanchAri: A student-built stage for young classical artistes

- Pooja Khandelwal
e-mail: pooja.k.11@gmail.com

November 13, 2026

More than 70 young artistes applied to perform at the inaugural Aarohi SanchAri Music and Dance Festival, held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta on October 31 and November 1, 2026. Thirty-four took the stage, presenting Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi and Odissi. They came from 14 U.S. states, from Boston to Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area to name a few.

What sets SanchAri apart is who built it. Many festivals for young classical artistes are organised by gurus, academies or cultural institutions. SanchAri was conceived, curated and run entirely by students of Aarohi, Georgia Tech's student organisation for the Indian classical arts.

A gap worth filling
Across much of the United States, young classical artistes have teachers and training but few places to perform, and few communities beyond their own school. SanchAri opened its call to artistes nationwide and pushed it out through social media. It is one thing to host an event; it is another to make sure it reaches the artistes who need it. The applications showed the difference.

How it began
SanchAri took shape after Aarohi president Sidharth Kaushik, a Carnatic musician and computer engineering student, performed at a youth music festival in Virginia. "More than the performance, I made a lot of friends and a lot of connections that I wouldn't have met otherwise," he says. At Aarohi's beginning-of-semester planning, the team took up the idea and developed it together.

The plan was a single, intimate day featuring artistes the team already knew. Then they opened applications nationally. The response surprised them, especially from dancers. The team had not reached out to any dancer specifically. The dancers found the festival through its open call on social media and applied on their own. So, one day became two.

Members of the Aarohi team, themselves trained musicians and dancers, reviewed every recording and invited 34 performers by consensus.

Run like clockwork
For a first edition at this scale, the organisation was remarkable. From the first communication through collecting bios, promotion on Instagram, and clear details on venue and timing, everything arrived when it should. The show itself ran on the dot: 34 artistes across two days, and nothing late. That is a feat for any organiser, and more so for students doing it for the first time.

Carnatic Performance by Rupa Ramanathan (vocal), Dr. Prashanth Muthukrishnan (violin), and Rajeev Devanath (mridangam)

Carnatic Performance by Shashank Ganeshan (vocal), Avaneesh Muralidharan (violin), and Navneeth Gopinath (mridangam)

Beyond the stage
The post-performance networking session was as thoughtfully curated as the stage. A series of icebreakers gradually led artistes, most of whom had never met, into improvising music and dance together. Watching strangers find each other through the language of music and dance was magical, and it gave artistes who might otherwise never have crossed paths a real chance to connect.

By the time the jam began, artistes who had met barely an hour earlier were singing, dancing, improvising and responding to each other like old friends. Some had never encountered each other's art forms before, yet no one wanted to leave. Between sets, artistes sought each other out to talk about specific moments in each other's performances, and much of the audience were fellow practitioners. "To hear that from another musician or another dancer who knows the technical details," Sidharth says, "for a performer, that is something else."

What comes next
The team hopes to make SanchAri an annual festival, and sustaining it will take effort because Aarohi raises its own funds. For a student-built first edition, it is a strong start. On this evidence, there is no shortage of young artistes looking for exactly this kind of stage.

Bharatanatyam by Harini Anantharaman

The performers
Carnatic vocal: Surabhi Sinha (Boston), Shivaani Komanduri, Sahithya Shriram and Shashank Ganeshan (Atlanta), Sasanka SN (Ashburn, VA), Gauvinchandar Sasivarnan and Anjana Sundararajan (Charlotte), Sriya Venkat (Raleigh), and Anish Anand, Smriti Swaminathan, Shrikrishna Shivakumar and Rupa Ramanathan (Bay Area).

Violin: Avaneesh Muralidharan (Milwaukee), Anand Krishnan, Sudarshan Prasanna and Prashanth Muthukrishnan (Atlanta).

Mridangam: Thapas Mudigonda (Portland), Archit Suresh (Atlanta), Navneeth Gopinath (Philadelphia), Rajeev Devanath, Saatvik Swaminathan and Anish Anand (Bay Area).

Bharatanatyam: Aishwarya Sivasubramanian (Philadelphia), Aditi Karthikeyan and Priyanka Mosur (Atlanta), Nandita Srikumar (Solon, OH), Gayathri Vignesh (Canton, MI), Harini Anantharaman (Morrisville, NC) and Lalithambika Geethu Jayadev (St. Louis).

Kathak: Riya Patel (Minneapolis), Sayali Goswami and Pooja Khandelwal (Bay Area).

Kuchipudi: Preeti Krishnamani (Houston).

Odissi: Ananya Kar (Indianapolis).

The Aarohi team

Bottom row left to right: Shobhita Suri, Sahana Gokul, Monisha Thiyagaraj, Rajeev Devanath, Dhriti Gramani, Deepika Ravi, Akshara Balaji, Sahana Raghavan, Mahima Puduvalli
Top row left to right: Heranmayee Barani, Sarvesh Jayaraman, Saiakshay Vaidyam, Sairevanth Pisupati, Kaustubh Grama, Avaneesh Muralidharan, Ananth Venuturupalle, Sidharth Kaushik

President Sidharth Kaushik and Vice President Sowmya Krithivasan.

Communications: co-chairs Sahana Raghavan and Dhriti Gramani, with Pranavi Srinivasa, Pranavamathi Kumaran, Dharanija Peram, Shruthi Mohan, Ananth Venuturupalle, Shaurya Attal, Sahana Gokul and Monisha Thiyagaraj.

Performances and Membership: music co-chairs Avaneesh Muralidharan and Saiakshay Vaidyam, dance chair Akshara Balaji, with Deepika Ravi, Rajeev Devanath, Shobhita Suri, Sarvesh Jayaraman, Harineel Gajelli and Heranmayee Barani.

Finance: chair Mahima Puduvalli, with Kaustubh Grama, Sairevanth Pisupati, Ananya Koushik and Meru Gopalan.

Pooja Khandelwal is a Kathak artiste trained in the Jaipur Gharana under Sayali Goswami and Guru Uma Dogra. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a principal dancer and volunteer instructor with Kathakaars School of Dance, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Performing Arts (Kathak). She also leads marketing at a fintech company and writes about Indian classical arts in the U.S.

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