The Kathak Legacy Project by Rachna Nivas offers comprehensive education in kathak dance in the style developed by legendary kathak master Pandit Chitresh Das, as well as fundamentals of North Indian classical music, history cultural context of the tradition.
Training in New York
Winter/Spring Classes 2026
Session Dates: January 25 - May 10, 2026
Spring Student Showcase: Sunday, May 10, 2026
BEGINNING LEVEL CLASSES FOR ADULTS/TEENS:
Kathak Level 1
Wed | 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Ripley-Grier Studios, 520 8th Ave (Midtown West)
Sun | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Gibney Studios, 53A Chambers (Lower Manhattan)
Pricing:
Semester Pass - $450 (13 weeks)*
*Registering for semester pass gives you access both classes per week. Classes are paid on a tuition concept rather than per class. as it is important to enter a mindset of studying the art form. Tuition includes access to as many classes as you would like to take as well as additional mentorship, direct training with Rachna Nivas, and an opportunity to perform in student showcase.
Not sure if you’re ready to commit? Take your first class for free!
Questions?
Email us at TheKathakLegacyProject@rachnanivas.dance
Class Experience
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Legacy is often seen as something fixed or inherited. But at The Kathak Legacy Project by Rachna Nivas, legacy is understood as the continuum of a living practice—past, present, and future. As Nivas states:
“The knowledge of Indian classical art cannot belong to any one individual. It is a living lineage, shaped and carried by cultural keepers over centuries. It only survives through human transmission, uncompromised practice, responsibility, and the courage and steadfastness to uphold its true spirit amid social and cultural evolution.”
Our Living Lineage
As an oral tradition, kathak is a nuanced craft and way of life, much like martial arts, that relies on masters to transmit embodied knowledge. As a vernacular form, it is necessarily taught through guru–shishya parampara (master–apprentice discipleship), a centuries-old system of mentorship in which knowledge is passed through long-term relationship, lived practice, and responsibility.
Legendary kathak master Pandit Chitresh Das comes from a long line of lineage bearers of the Lucknow gharana of kathak. His guru, Sri Ram Narayan Misra, and his father, Prahlad Das, were disciples of the great Shambhu and Achhan Maharaj. Carrying his guru’s intensive and all-encompassing approach to training, Pandit Das brought kathak to the United States in 1970. Over the next four and a half decades, he trained multiple generations of students and disciples, evolving the tradition to meet modern contexts while preserving its rigor and spirit.
Rachna Nivas emerged from this lineage through years of intensive study and close mentorship, later serving as an appointed Director of the Chhandam School of Kathak from 2010 to 2016. Her work is now also shaped by mentorship and rigorous practice—centering creative agency, musical dialogue, and embodied knowledge. These values continue to guide how kathak is taught and carried forward through The Kathak Legacy Project today.
The Kathak Legacy Project serves as the first center in New York City dedicated to training and education in Pandit Das’s extraordinary style and approach—carrying the lineage forward as a living, evolving practice grounded in mentorship and diasporic life.
Highlighting Kathak’s syncretic roots, shaped by Hindu and Muslim artistic, devotional, and courtly traditions, are also fundamental to The Legacy Project's approach. Nivas consistently foregrounds this shared cultural inheritance, positioning kathak as a singular space of harmony, shared history and land, at a time when communities are often divided. Across her choreography, pedagogy, and community leadership, Nivas treats lineage as something carried forward through presence, relationship, and lived practice—ensuring that kathak remains responsive, interconnected, and deeply alive within diasporic cultural life.
Rachna Nivas’s approach to lineage is shaped by a diasporic experience that sits at the intersection of East and West. Raised by trailblazing South Asian immigrants who planted cultural roots in the United States in the wake of San Francisco’s 1960s countercultural movement, she inherited both India’s rich artistic traditions and the complexities of a post-colonial reality. With a family history rooted in activism against British rule and caste oppression, inquiry of ownership, responsibility, and decolonization have always been central to her work.
Within this context, kathak becomes more than a classical form—it becomes a site of resistance, reclamation, and humanity. Nivas’s work as an educator is driven by engendering pride in Indian classical art, and by a commitment to protecting its historical, philosophical, physical, and spiritual depth, while refusing its exotification under Western frameworks. Central to this work is the elevation of feminine consciousness and ancient matriarchal concepts embedded within Indic civilization that challenge rigid gender binaries and are expressed through the body, rhythm, and storytelling.
