Gallery Spotlight: Choreographing Color

Complimentary with general museum admission, the Gallery Spotlight Series is a monthly conversation with featured guests.

Join the Academy Museum in conversation with Astrophysicist and Bharatanatyam professional dancer Nivedita Mahesh and Senior Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel as they discuss the style, movement, and interpretation of color in cinema choreography. The conversation will also showcase a performance from Mahesh inspired by select films from our Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema exhibition.

Date: Friday, December 13, 2024, 12pm

Location: Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby, Level 1

Cost: Complimentary with General Admission

Visitors are encouraged to visit the galleries before or after the conversation.

Nivedita Mahesh is a scientist and dancer. Regarding her dance journey, she is trained in Bharatanatyam and has been practicing for over 25 years. She also learned hip-hop and contemporary, performing with dance teams in Bangalore, India. Over the last three years, she has been training in Bharatanatyam from Smt. Sumana Mandala to learn Karanas from the original Natya Shastra. On this journey, she has taught dance extensively as a part of the various dance teams at UCLA, ASU, and Caltech. At ASU, she co-founded the Indian classical dance team—Swarajathi. She is always interested in experimenting with the dance form to show more relatable stories to audiences. She joined BollyPop LA last year and has been teaching workshops and regular classes in Pasadena, Glendora, and West LA. At Caltech, you will find Nivedita researching how to build telescopes on the Moon to uncover the early mysteries of our Universe. She enjoys science communication, often giving science public talks at breweries and schools around LA. Nivedita Mahesh was born and raised in Coimbatore, India. She moved to the US in 2016.

Jessica Niebel has organized internationally touring exhibitions, including Anime! High Art-Pop Culture (2008); Jim Rakete: The State of Things (2011); And the Oscar Goes to ... 85 Years of the Best Picture Academy Award (2012); and Theaters: Cinema Photography by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre (2014) as curator at the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany, where she was a member of the museum's award-winning film programming committee and edited numerous exhibition catalogues. For the Academy Museum, Niebel curated its inaugural temporary exhibitions, Hayao Miyazaki and The Path to Cinema: Highlights from the Richard Balzer Collection, as well as Director’s Inspiration: Agnès Varda (conceptualized by former Assistant Curator Ana Santiago). Niebel holds a master's degree in media studies from the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, and studied media production at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.

About Gallery Spotlights:

The Education and Public Engagement team invites visitors to explore Stories of Cinema, the Academy Museum’s ongoing core exhibition that presents the diverse, international, and complex stories of moviemakers and the works they create.

If you have any questions or need assistance planning your visit, please email museumeducation@oscars.org.

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