Ishita Mili is a Bengali American director, choreographer, and iconoclast disrupting bharatanatyam, hip hop, Mayurbhanj chhau, and contemporary dance. Ishita founded IMGE (“image”) as a performance company based in dance, film, and music that unravels cultural roots to thread together global stories with artists of diverse backgrounds. IMGE’s holistic movement vocabulary encompasses dynamic imagery, mudra storytelling, and percussive footwork to confront social and cultural constructs. Over the last 6 years, Ishita’s work has reached inter/national stages (New Victory Theater, Lincoln Center, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival), commercial campaigns (NBCuniversal, IndoWarehouse), and theater (Broadway Bares, Asolo Rep’s “Hair”). Ishita was awarded Artist of Exceptional Merit by the Asian American Arts Alliance, was a guest choreographer at Princeton University, and was mostly recently selected into the LabWorks '24-'25 cohort. IMGE was featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair and amassed a global fan base.
Her classes provide an elemental approach to globalized movement and therapeutic storytelling. Class deconstructs hybrid movement phrases with influences from hip hop, bharatanatyam, to chhau. Her intensives offer a multi-day deep dive into the historical connections between cross-cultural movement, body and mental alignment to access your maximum potential, and nature-based emotive grounding. Ishita has taught the IMGE methodology across studios and universities in US and India and is embarking on a national teaching tour.
Class is open to movers from all backgrounds who are interested in finding community with like-minded explorers.