Artistic Director
Charlotte Moraga
CHARLOTTE MORAGA
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Charlotte Moraga began dancing at the age of nine. Four years after beginning her study with Pandit Chitresh Das in 1992, she joined his company and was a principal dancer and soloist in his original works from 1996 to 2016 such as Darbar, Pancha Jati, Subali Sugriwa, Sampurnam, India Jazz Progressions, Sita Haran, Yatra, and Shiva. She is one of 7 disciples with whom Pandit Das tied strings (ganda bandhan). She had her ganda bandhan ceremony in Kolkata and performed her first 2 hour solo concert. Since then, she has toured as a solo artist throughout the US and India. She has performed in many prestigious venues and festivals around the world.
“Thursday night’s triumph belonged to Charlotte Moraga…She has technical virtuosity, but more importantly she has intention, and an intelligence that shapes every step.”
In 2002, she became the inaugural director of the Chitresh Das Youth Company. She is committed to developing and nurturing the next generation of kathak artists. Under Pandit Das’ guidance and nurturing, he had her create choreography for the CDYC for almost two decades. In 2018, in her Guruji’s birthplace of Kolkata, India, Charlotte received the “Anugami” for her dedication to her Guruji and his legacy.
In 2007, she received a Shensen Performing Arts Fellowship which helped her to create original work in collaborations with renowned tap dancer and choreographer, Chloe Arnold, in ‘Sangam’ at Das’ ‘India Jazz Progressions’. Her Performing Diaspora residency at CounterPulse in 2009 supported her to create ‘Conference in Nine,’ based on a 12th century Sufi poem with Indian classical saxaphonist Prasant Radhakrishnan.
Following Pandit Das’ death in 2015, Charlotteji joined Panditji’s widow Celine Schein Das and Preeti Zalavadia to found the Chitresh Das Institute, serving as its Artistic Director. In this capacity she has to received great acclaim for her choreography grounded in tradition, yet evolved to reflect her voice and moment in which we live. Her choreography to music composed by Ritesh Das, premiered at the War Memorial Opera House for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival to critical acclaim, and in 2019, her work ‘Aranya Devi’ premiered at the S.F. Ethnic Dance Festival at Zellerbach Hall. In 2020 we premiered ‘Agni’ the short film, ‘Agni’ directed by Alka Raghuram with music composed by Alam Khan, conceived and choreographed by Moraga and recently won the 2021 award for the Best Mini Arts and Fashion Film at the iHollywood Film Festival.
In 2021 her work in collaboration with composer and master Sarod musician Alam Khan premiered and was included in the 2021 Year of Dance in Review in the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2022 her work “Invoking the River” with music composed by Utsav Lal and multimedia and poetry by Alka Raghuram premiered. and has since toured to three cities in India, to North Carolina, Texas and in NYC in September 2025. India Currents Magazine said of ‘Invoking the River’: “Spellbinding performances by four dancers of Chitresh Das Dance in both individual and combined pieces created magic on stage at San Francisco’s ODC theater.” In November 2025 she is premiering ‘Veil of Janki Bai’ a new work in collaboration with Alka Raghuram and vocalist Saneyee Purandare Bhattacharjee. Charlotteji continues to train the next generation of dancers up to and beyond the professional level in the tradition of her Guruji, Pandit Chitresh Das. Since founding CDI in 2016, Charlotteji has graduated 10 professional dancers through the Chiresh Das Youth Company program, 7 of whom are dancing professionally with Chitresh Das Dance.
Critical Acclaim for Charlotte Moraga
“Of the 16 dancers who participated in Saturday’s performance, Moraga herself claimed the most attention. Her Shiva, seen only in silhouette behind a screen that suggested the Earth seen from a interstellar location, still mesmerized with its twisting grandeur. Here, the appeal was universal.”
“Her 2014 performance in Yatra at the Palace of Fine Arts was described as, “…elevated to classical form by Charlotte Moraga’s sense of perfection in the details and her extraordinary speed and precision in those pirouettes.” ”
“Yet as a performer she mesmerizes even more because her presentations are so infused with the excitement of discovery and the evident joy she experiences at the ever changing play between the musicians and the dancer. Rarely have I seen such technically complex, crystalline dancing performed with such abandon.”