Pooja Mehta, 16, a Plainsboro resident, strives to maintain a balance between the Indian heritage of her immigrant parents and the culture of the United States, where she was born and raised. A rising junior at High School South, she keeps herself busy between competitive studies, piano class, volunteer work at Princeton Medical Group’s Merwick Center, and being a junior dance choreographer of Payal Dancing School in Plainsboro.
As a choreographer and teacher at the school, she teaches Indian classical and folk dances to students ranging from ages 3 to 20. She herself graduated from Payal Dancing School in summer of 2004 (youngest graduating student of the school) after training for eight years. Her graduation recital with another student of Payal Dancing School, Ratna Shah, was a three-hour dance performance televised on International Cable channel.
Every year Pooja’s dance students perform in various cultural shows organized in the tri-state area, including Zee-Heritage India Festival, the cultural show at the New Jersey Department of Transportation, welcome dance during the musical ballet “An Idea Named Meera” by Mallika Sarabhai at Annenberg Center, Philadelphia, performances at the International Festival by Somerset County Cultural Diversity Coalition at Raritan Valley College Center, and a “Bharatnatyam” workshop at Moorestown School.
Pooja and her students will also perform during the show of “Sita Shakti Kavya” on Sunday, June 26, at the Samarpan Hindu Temple, Philadelphia. She also gives a solo performance for seniors at Princeton Medical Group’s Merwick Center later in June.
In 2001 Pooja visited Great Britain as a “People-to-People Student Ambassador” and was recently selected for the same program.
