Gaurav Kaushik dances Sunday, March 29th at I ♥ NYorchesis.
Gaurav Kaushik, a Biomedical Engineering undergraduate senior at Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has discovered his inner passion for dance as a both a spiritualistic release and a form of self expression. After enduring the rigors of an unrelenting Ivy-League engineering curriculum, Mr. Kaushik has finally found a modality in which he can release his creativity and individuality. Not a moment too soon Kaushik, in his final semester, had decided to join Columbia’s student run dance group, “Orchesis”, which puts on a performance near the end of each semester. Forestalled possibly by social stigmas surrounding male dancers or perhaps intimidated by the majority-female demographic of the Orchesis dance group, Kaushik drew confidence and support from a close friend and fellow Biomedical Engineer Vikrum Thimmappa who joined Kaushik in his pursuit of dance.
Exploding into the spotlight on Columbia’s stage in a two-night-only performance of Orchesis’s 2009 spring-semester show “I Love NYorchesis”, Kaushik is a tour-de-force who has taken Columbia’s dance and theater scene by storm. In his highly-emotive debut performance “BUGS!”, Kaushik danced to the music “No More Mosquitos” by Four Tet and “Ugly Bug Ball” by Burl Ives, starring as a loveable but sad caterpillar and depicts his symbolic metamorphosis into a vibrant and blissful butterfly. The connections that could be drawn from Kaushik’s dance-piece and his life-long road to the performing arts are both immediately apparent and deeply moving for audience members familiar with his story. For two nights in a row in the Roone Arledge Auditorium, with all eyes upon him, Kaushik was able to captivate and inspire those who bared witness to his public transformation.
The emergence of Kaushik’s inner butterfly coupled with his transcendence of the societal confines of stereotypes leading to the belief that a man cannot both be heterosexual and a dancer will forever be remembered by throngs of admirers that attended on those nights. Like a true butterfly, Kaushik’s performance was lively but brief, and as time passes we will be rendered with only fleeting memories and these pictures by which to remember the occasion.
