Social: Yours, Tenderly Walking Tour, Film Premiere and Reception

Yours, Tenderly is a multimedia experience that pays homage to the vibrant immigrant South Asian community of the Tenderloin and the greater San Francisco metropolis. Conceptualized by Preethi Ramaprasad, each component draws on her experience as a resident artist and researcher at the San Francisco Public Library and San Francisco Arts Commission of the local performing arts scene, residents, restaurants and other South Asian cultural markers of which there are only some remnants in the city. 

The evening showcase will begin with a walking tour led by Anirvan Chatterjee and Barnali Ghosh, visiting notable places connecting to the area’s radical South Asian history and homes and will include stops featuring librarian and author Mozzam Sheikh and performing artist Sanxe Loveji. The tour will begin and end at the Tenderloin Museum. Space is limited, and registration is required.

At 7pm, Tenderloin Museum hosts an artist reception at which Ramaprasad will talk about her project and premiere her new film. Conceived as a dance film, Yours, Tenderly traces the history of South Asians in the Tenderloin through the artistic form of Bharatanatyam dance. In the film, Ramaprasad visits sites significant to the South Asian community, found through her research at the SFPL, and performs in front of them. Through performance, the film commemorates South Asian immigration and early cultural centers in the area, South Asian performances in the area, and generally, a celebration of the Tenderloin’s contribution to the national economy and culture.   

After the program, Tenderloin Museum will exhibit Ramaprasad's Yours, Tenderly in its main gallery space through the month of October.

Learn more about Ramaprasad’s work and the San Francisco Arts Commission's Artist-in-Residence program. 

Produced by: San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Public Library

Event Partners: Tenderloin Museum, Radical South Asian History Walking Tour 

Concept, Choreography: Preethi Ramaprasad

Production Director: Xiomara Forbez

Film/Cinematography/Editor: Joanna Ruckman 

Music: Ganavya Doraiswamy 

Creative Advisors, Mentors: Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy, Priya Murle

Dance Collaborator: Nadhi Thekkek

About the Artists & Project Collaborators: 

Preethi Ramaprasad

Preethi Ramaprasad (she/her) is a multifaceted transnational dancer, musician and researcher based in San Francisco. She has toured and performed Bharatanatyam across India, Europe and the United States.

A student of Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy, Ramaprasad is committed to a critical study of South Asian art around the world in scholarship and performance. She co-curates the “Varnam Salon,” an intimate space for sharing Bharatanatyam choreography, “Performing Voices of Bhakti,” a platform for artists to perform radical South Asian poetry and San Francisco’s first South Asian choreography festival, “When Eyes Speak.” 

Ramaprasad’s workshops on Bharatanatyam and its global politics have been presented at various institutions including Barnard College, Juilliard School of the Arts, Sonoma State University, Heart with Lines by Alonzo King and YoungArts. Her work has been funded by and earned accolades from: the San Francisco Arts Commission and San Francisco Public Library Residency; Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts; Zellerbach Family Foundation; American Conservatory Theater ArtShare Fellowship; Deborah Slater Dance Theater Residency; SAFEhouse Arts Lead Artist Fellowship, All-Rounder Yuva Kala Bharati for Young Artists; Guru Sanjukta Panigrahi Award; and the National YoungArts Scholarship to name a few.

Ramaprasad has a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on politics and representation in the performance of myth among transnational Bharatanatyam practitioners. Her choreography centers around experimenting with Bharatanatyam as a transnational dancer through poetry, community building and storytelling.  

Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee 

Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee are Bay Area activists and community historians who curate the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. The award-winning monthly event shares stories of four generations of immigrant activists, using storytelling, archival research and street theater.

Chaterjee is a South Asian American organizer, currently a core organizer with Bay Area Solidarity Summer and the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action and previously with groups like the Desi Queer Helpline and South Asian Histories for All. He brings a digital humanities and guerrilla archiving approach to his movement history work.

Ghosh is an artist and activist whose work is rooted in climate justice. She is running as a climate candidate for the BART board of directors in the November 2024 election, building on a decade of transportation activism and policy work. She played a key role in naming Kala Bagai Way in downtown Berkeley and the campaign to replace the city’s armed traffic enforcement with smarter alternatives.

Filmmaker: Joanna Ruckman

Joanna Ruckman is an anti-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and educator. She believes in artistic and creative thinking to empower social change. Her projects aim to disrupt mainstream mentalities, amplify traditional wisdoms and cultivate feminine power.

She is producing a series of documentary shorts which amplify stories of Bay Area BIPOC creatives and culture bearers. She designs and prints posters in public spaces in collaboration with many activist organizations with SF Poster Syndicate. Ruckman received her MFA from SFAI in 2020 and teaches Digital Imaging courses in Multimedia Arts at Berkeley City College. 

Project Director: Xiomara Forbez

Xiomara Forbez is a multidisciplinary artist, drawing on performance, visual art, dance, film, writing, installation, directing and craft. With a BA in French, BA in Linguistics and PhD in Critical Dance Studies, she was trained to think critically about the politics and uses of languages and bodies. Forbez is deeply invested in the exquisite corpse as a method because it values collaboration, contrariety and chance. 

She has received multiple fellowships/awards from the Gluck Foundation to design and implement outreach initiatives, such as dance and culture workshops for K-12 as well as collaborative art, including a performance series (2015-2022). In 2022, Forbez was chosen as a Multidisciplinary Artist Fellow at the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France). She was also selected as a Green Space Miami artist/awardee (2023/2024). 

Artistic Advisors/Consultants: 

Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy

A unique internationally honored artiste, Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy has been in the field of Bharatanatyam for more than seven-and-a-half decades. A rare combination of a dancer, teacher, choreographer and philosopher, what marks her recital is exuberance with an artistic restraint. She is perhaps one of the rare Bharatanatyam dancers in India who has performed before visiting dignitaries in India since 1956. Some of them include Bulganin, Krushchev, the Emperor of Ethiopia, the King of Afganisthan, Chou en Lai, Ho Chi Minh and many others, including a command performance for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. As an artiste of outstanding caliber, she had the privilege of performing at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Human Rights Day in December 1981, on an invitation from the then Secretary-General, Kurt Waldheim. She has participated in several national and international seminars and has served on the board of several cultural committees. 

In 1970, Raghupathy founded Shree Bharatalaya, a unique institution of fine arts for the dissemination of culture. Her institution is perhaps the only one of its kind in the nation that has produced valuable resource material, which is a unique contribution to the world of fine arts. A few of the prestigious awards conferred on her include Padma Shri (1988), Central Sangeet Natak Akademi award (1984), Kalaimamani (1981-Tamil Nadu state award), Sapthagiri Sangeetha Vidwanmani (1996-Andhra Pradesh), Kalashree (1999-Karnataka) Telugu Academy award among many others.

Priya Murle

Priya Murle has been a choreographer, performer, teacher and researcher in the field of Bharatanatyam for over four decades. A disciple of the legend Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy, Murle is the artistic director of Shri Silambam Academy of Fine Arts (Chennai, India). An MPhil in Philosophy with a focus on Rasa theory, Murle has performed the world over and received several awards, including the Tamil Nadu State Award, Kalaimamani. Along with Shreya Nagarajan Singh, Murle has started the Parivartan Research Initiative which provides annual short grants for research projects related to the arts. Murle is actively involved in outreach programs that make classical dance accessible to all. She is currently the President of the Association of Bharatanatyam Artists of India.

Nadhi Thekkek

Nadhi Thekkek is a dancer, choreographer and the Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre. Thekkek uses the south Indian dance form of bharatanatyam to navigate place, identity and politics through the lens of her lived experience as a child of immigrants and an unapologetic South Asian diasporic woman.  Her latest work “Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies” sources community interviews, historical texts and poetry to explore the intersections of labor, agency and belonging in our South Asian ancestry. Thekkek's body of work has been supported through the NEFA National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission and others. Through Nava, Thekkek produces and co-facilitates the Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program, where South Asian dancemakers create art that challenges the status quo. She is one of the co-founders of Varnam Salon and serves on the board of the Western Arts Alliance. Thekkek has learned bharatanatyam from Guru Smt. Sundara Swaminathan (Kala Vandana Dance Company, San Jose) and Guru Smt. Padmini Chari (Nritya School of Dance, Houston). As of 2012, she has continued training under Guru Sri. A. Lakshmanaswamy (Chennai).