MAYA

MAYA - A Fundraiser Production by The Junoon Foundation

Junoon returns to the NCPA, Mumbai, with its second production - MAYA on Thursday, April 9, 2026, a fundraiser for the professional dance education of select students at The Junoon Academy in Dhasa, Gujarat, our first-ever establishment situated at the very location where Junoon began its first-ever operation - our Rural Outreach - nearly 5 years ago.

In terms of narrative, this is actually a sequel to our first - KAYA, staged at the NCPA in September 2025, which presented the vicissitudes of being and becoming a dancer, whilst honoring a dancer's most vital instrument - her body.

MAYA presents the challenge of preserving and perpetuating this rare, performance art form via a duet between both titular characters - KAYA and MAYA.

Junoon, a foundation purposed with enabling an awareness and diffusion of classical dance, puts forth narratives that are aligned with its purpose via its productions. We are motivated by a mission to both bring more people to the art - specifically our holistic and immersive dance education - as well as carry the art where it is not.

The Junoon Academy in Dhasa, Gujarat, is training and nurturing a select batch of students who are aiming to become professional dancers. This, as they simultaneously assume responsibility to train their juniors, having come through our train-the-trainer program which ensures the progression of our authentic, holistic, and immersive dance education.

The Junoon Methodology, our heavily researched and carefully organized curriculum, involves 4 levels of training - Absolute Beginners, Beginners, Intermediate, and Advanced for a variety of classical and contemporary dance forms - before our dancers are deemed fit to take on the even greater rigor of professional dance training.

The dancers we are raising funds for have been training with us since our very first Rural Outreach in the same region back in September 2021. They are both learning and teaching and therefore, furthering the art, as they train to go pro and eventually become company members of The Junoon Production House. This will ensure a dignified and lucrative performance career for them, as they also migrate from rural to urban India in order to fully live out their potential as artists.

Our second production, MAYA, is a significant step in that direction. Through this fundraising campaign, we hope to see our dancers from Dhasa in rehearsal rooms and on stages in urban India, to make their journeys come full circle, making professional dancing a reality and possibility for all demographics in the dynamic Indian cultural context.

Junoon's second production, MAYA, presents the existential question weighing in on every dancer that has ever chosen to pioneer their rare and enormous art form: "What's the way forward?"

Tradition has forever been met with the challenge of preservation and relevance. MAYA hopes to provide answers, direction, and momentum for ancient and contemporary dance forms to be authentically led into a future that holds space for them.

MAYA is a direct follow-on from Junoon's first production, KAYA. Staged a few months prior to its sequel, KAYA was a look at the intricate relationship a dancer shares with her most vital instrument - her body - and every consequent social, psychological, and spiritual experience therein.

KAYA, the titular character of the prequel, is now confronted with the responsibility of perpetuating the art she practices. It cannot die with her; it has to live and outlive her.

But practising is different from perpetuating. The latter needs a breath of fresh air - a new way of seeing, doing, and creating with an art that has existed for millennia.

Only MAYA can help build the road ahead. But MAYA has fled the scene for a freer expression of her art.

KAYA goes in search of MAYA, the only other dancer known to her who understands the depth and extent of the art they have both grown up practising together.

If MAYA does return, will they both be able to see their art form into the future? The task is a tall ask. No different from dance.

This second Junoon production employs three dance forms - Bharatanatyam, classical ballet, and contemporary dance - as well as martial arts sequences.

This dance recital is a duet in which the character of MAYA is played by Bhavisha Kothari, a mixed-form dancer of classical and contemporary dance. Mythili Zatakia continues in her role as KAYA from the prequel.

Produced by: The Junoon Foundation

Conceptualized, Directed and Performed by: Bhavisha Kothari & Mythili Zatakia Conceptualised

Duration: 80 mins total (with a 15min intermission)

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