Niharika Senapati

The Australian dancer Niharika Senapati graduated in 2011 from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in Perth. Trained as a contemporary dancer, she describes her practice as floating between the different roles of dancer, performer, teacher, maker, sound designer and choreography assistant. Between 2012-2018 she performed frequently with the Australian dance company Chunky Move, under the artistic direction of Anouk van Dijk. In 2016 she worked as a choreography assistant for Schauspiel Frankfurt for the performance Safe Places (by Falk Richter and Anouk van Dijk). She also fulfilled this role for the production Complexity of Belonging by Falk Richter at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2013 and for the production Distant Matter by Anouk van Dijk at the Staatsballett Berlin in 2019. In 2018, Senapati performed at the Melbourne Festival, where she was involved in the production Trustees directed by Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin. In 2021 she joined Dancenorth Australia. From the 2021-2022 season, she has been part of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen company, where she has appeared in Futur proche by Jan Martens, One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe, the creation Extant by Jermaine Maurice Spivey, among others. In 2023, she showed her own choreography Carcass during the performance Perspectives on Bach.

Repertoire at OBV

• Futur proche (Jan Martens)*
• Satyagraha (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui)
• Extant (Jermaine Maurice Spivey)*
• One Flat Thing, reproduced (William Forsythe)
• Half Life (Sharon Eyal)

*originated the role

Update: October 2023