About
Shiv is an artist (actor, comic, dancer, model) and doctor based in Los Angeles. His background in Kathak dance, music, and anthropology drives most of his creative work. He has trained in Kathak for over 15 years and various musical styles (western classical, musical theater, jazz, pop) for 10+ years.
In 2024, his dance film titled Turbinado (commissioned by the City of LA), was chosen as the official selection at the Manifest Dance Film Festival in Pondicherry. From 2019-2020, Shiv used a US-UK Fulbright award to earn his MA in dance anthropology at the University of Roehampton London, where his dissertation arguing for an inherently queer understanding of Kathak dance won the Best Dissertation Prize.
As someone who thrives in the in-between, Shiv’s personal and professional identity remains fluid, evading being placed neatly in any field. At the intersection of medicine and the arts, Shiv has worked on dance therapy interventions with patients with Parkinson’s and kids with autism, hosted a podcast on creativity in medicine, and curated museum experiences to promote art education for colleagues in health care. Shiv’s dance work has been showcased through performances in LA, NJ, NYC, Philadelphia, Toronto, Berlin, and London.
Whether conveyed through live performance or film, Shiv’s storytelling is driven by a deep curiosity for human experience and the depths of the human psyche. He plans to continue telling nuanced stories that capture our deeply personal yet collectively relatable experiences.