Originally from India, Nikita is a multidisciplinary artist based in The Netherlands with over a decade of experience in choreography, research, art education, dramaturgy and curation.

Her art inquiries lie at the nexus of gender, culture, and identity. Through her performances, exhibits, curation work and writings, she is deeply invested in telling stories of plurality, female agency, forms of marginalisation and class divide. In her performance work, she looks for ways to blend nuanced movement, silence, spoken word and new-age media, and to invite the audience to participate in the creation of meaning and collective knowledge.

Graduated from Master Performing Public Space at Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (FHK), Tilburg, Nikita is an empanelled artist with the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and has trained in Indian classical dance-theatre form of Kathakali and Post-Modern dance techniques.

From 2016-2019, she worked as the creative director at Natya Ballet Centre, Delhi, a 60-year-old pioneering institution of dance in India, facilitating the development of contemporary and subversive artistic practices, and bringing to the fore non-institutionalised and marginalised dance-theatre forms of the Subcontinent. She continues to serve as the festival director for the biennale The Natya Ballet Dance Festival. 

Since 2019, as a research fellow at the DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam (2019-2022), Nikita is invested in a long term artistic research project Naachne-wali: The Dancing Girl. Currently, she works as an independent performance maker, teaches at the Academy of Circus and Performance Arts, Fontys School of Fine & Performing Arts and Muziektheater, Codarts University of the Arts and guest lectures at various arts programmes and institutions in Europe and India.

Nikita Maheshwary is the rooted dancemaker for the Community of Tilburg (DansBrabant) and the traveling dancemaker for the Community of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Theaterfestival Boulevard).