…About Wendy
"I felt your dancing was the embodiment of sacred femininity. It was a poem to the loveliness and playfulness of the universe. Beautiful and inspiring."
—Diane Porter
Training/Background
Wendy Stegall is a performing artist and instructor of Kathak and Bollywood. For over twenty years, she has studied, performed and taught Kathak: classical dance of North India. She also studied Bharata Natyam for a year in Washington D.C. Studying in India and the U. S. her education has been blessed by great gurus of these dance arts, her most long-term teacher being Sandhya DeSai of the Kadamb Center for Dance and Music in Ahmedebad. Other teachers include Shila Mehta and Uma Sharma. Her authenticity in rendering the Indian dance arts has afforded her many opportunities to share the splendors of Indian dance with both Western and Indian audiences and she has become well known among the Indian communities in Fairfield and Iowa City, IA and elsewhere as she has performed for many years in cultural programs and special events. Wendy has also enjoyed two years of Nia classes, a year of Ballroom dance, continual dips into Middle Eastern (bellydance) and is keen to continue choreographing and exploring a fusion of dance languages. But it is Indian dance that propels and kindles it all.
Kathak Meets Bollywood
"With bollywood dancing, I get to bring Indian dance to many more people and share the contagious joy of a style that is many styles at once. Bollywood dancing has given my dance wings! I have more to create with and at the same time can bring accessible dances to people interested not in dance as a life-long discipline, but as a path to health, happiness and community. From deeply sensual to playful, from cheesy to fascinating and mysterious. It's all there and we are having a blast!"
Arts in Education
Wendy is rostered with the Iowa Arts Council and is a cultural ambassador for World of Difference. Her workshops and presentations on Bollywood and Kathak are lively and entertaining and are a hit in schools, colleges, libraries, and groups of all ages. Try getting a group of twelve-year-old boys to dance in a group. Well they will now! The Hip Hop element in Bollywood dance today makes it charming to kids of all ages.
"They talked about her program for days!"
—Marilyn Scott; Pence Elementary
Ecstatic Dance
Wendy also incorporates improvisation into her performance repertoire. The more dance languages one can utilize the more one's spontaneity can be trusted to create something beautiful, interesting, dynamic and transforming. The goal is to be "danced by the Divine" and bring beauty to eyes and hearts. Dance is reverence, bliss, science, emotion, integration, catharsis, actualization, freedom, love."
Home/Other Activities
Wendy lives in Fairfield, Iowa, where she first came in 1980 to be part of the Transcendental Meditation community. In addition to dance she indexes books and also has Sacred Seduction Clothing, made in India. (For information on trunk sales write her at wendy@bollywoodiowa.com).