Ambika Raina is primarily a choreographer and dance director for the stage, theatre, and camera based in Lenape Territory/NYC.

As a maker she is known for a signature movement vocabulary influenced by her own experiences with modern dance, social dance, folk dance, and Bharatnatyam. Her work flirts with commercial sensibilities but is rooted in an experimental foundation.

Ambika is interested in dance as a cultural, communal act that lifts people up and speaks to real experiences. Thematically, she is passionate about dance and theater’s relationship to tangible change in our material reality.

Ambika won the 2024 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Choreography in a Play for her work on A Nice Indian Boy (Olney Theatre Center). She previously earned two Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation fellowships that led to her assisting Camille A. Brown on For Colored Girls (The Public Theater) and Susan Stroman on New York, New York (pre-Broadway).

Her original dance work has been produced by NYU Skirball, The Chocolate Factory, Issue Project Room, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, and more.

Ambika earned the 2022 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant and the 2024 En Foco Media Arts Grant. Her movement direction/choreography is featured in numerous music videos. Ambika was a guest teacher of Contemporary dance at Mark Morris Dance Center for 2 years. 

She holds a BFA Dance from University of Michigan - School of Music Theatre and Dance.

photos by Yekaterina Gyadu