Dayita Nereyeth (she/her) is an independent artist, editor, and facilitator. She holds a BA in Dance and Psychology from Mount Holyoke College. Dayita is an advanced professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), UK, and a teaching member of Alexander Technique International (ATI).

 

Dayita teaches the Alexander Technique privately and in groups. She trained to teach with Robin and Béatrice Simmons. Dayita is the first Alexander Technique teacher to be trained and qualified in India. She came to the Alexander Technique to deal with a recurring stiff neck (which was relieved within a week!), and quickly discovered the transformative potential of the work to bring ease and agency into all aspects of her life. In her teaching practice, she is interested in the idea of ongoing preparation and in creating space for people to observe and explore ease, habits, tensions, freedoms, and ways of being. Dayita also teaches Cunningham Technique® to dancers. She has studied Cunningham Technique® at the Merce Cunningham Trust and American Dance Festival. Over the years, she has engaged with the rich Cunningham legacy in classes, workshops, performances, and case studies. Most recently, Dayita participated in the first official teacher training in New York City. She is one of a select group of authorised Cunningham Technique® teachers. In her classes, she encourages dancers to move with clarity and ease. 

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As a performer and creator, Dayita is informed and inspired by improvisational techniques, ballet, and Cunningham. She is interested in the idea of performance as being, and is invested in finding connections which manifest as easy precision and expansive presence. In her ongoing movement investigations, Dayita balances simplicity with lightness and play. ​She enjoys and prioritises collaborations with friends, both locally and across continents. Dayita has collaborated with Ellen Oliver, Poorna Swami, Margaret Wiss, Anishaa Tavag, Joshua Sailo, Bharavi, Abhaydev Praful, Dara Hankins, Mario Schenker, and Ainesh Madan. She has presented her work in India and internationally. Dayita has performed in work by Merce Cunningham (50 Looks, TV Rerun, and Squaregame), Peggy Baker (Yang), Sasha Waltz (In C), Claudia Lavista and Omar Carrum (Full and Empty), Tong Wang (In the Reflection), Charles Flachs (Homage to M), Billbob Brown (Judgments), Yana Lewis (Belle and the Beast), Sarah Locar (Heimatlos), Mirra (iFace), Diya Naidu (Rorschach Touch), Pat Catterson (Project 114), Poorna Swami and Marcel Zaes  (The Long and Short of It), Vinod Ravindran (On Living with the World), Robert Lisek (SUPERPOSITION), Veena Basavarajiah, and Joshua Sailo (Folk It!). From 2007 to 2011, Dayita was a member of the Yana Lewis Dance Company, which toured India and Switzerland. She is a co-founding member of 206 Dance Collective.

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Passionate about other aspects of artistry, Dayita has worked extensively in stagecraft, at the American Dance Festival (USA) and Dixon Place (USA), and in coordination at Shoonya – Centre for Art and Somatic Practices (India). She has also conducted research on how dancers learn and remember movement and on the representation of movement in thought at the Memory for Movement/Day Cognition Lab at Duke University (USA) and American Dance Festival, and for her honours thesis, The Moving Mind: An Exploration of Dance and Imagery, at Mount Holyoke College (USA).

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Dayita lives in Bangalore, India. In her free time, she dances, sings, plays the ukulele, reads, watches too much TV, writes, and brews kombucha.