Famed Indian Kathak dancer and choreographer Chitresh Das was one of 11 honorees recognized by the National Endowment of the Arts on May 16th, it was announced. The fellowship, which includes a one-time award of $25,000, is the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

“The NEA is proud to celebrate these artists whose lifetime of service and dedication preserve our nation’s diverse cultural heritage,” NEA Acting Chair Patrice Walker Powell said in a released statement. Das was one of 11 artists honored by the NEA, all of whom received $25,000 fellowships for their “artistic excellence and contributions to their respective artistic traditions.” The fellowship is granted as part of the NEA National Heritage Fellowships public programs.

A Pandit of Kathak, Das has influenced the art form in the United States since 1970, when he arrived at the University of Maryland to teach the classical northern Indian dance as part of the school’s Whitney Fellowship. Since, he has taught Kathak and mentored classical dance students here in the U.S. and abroad, influencing the opening of several schools to teach the elaborate art form. Recently, a few of his students opened a Kathak school in San Francisco and a chapter in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge.

In awarding Das the prestigious award, the NEA honored him for his significant contributions to Indian folk and traditional dance here in the United States. After arriving in Maryland in 1970 as part of the Whitney Fellowship, Das then went on to be an instructor at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music in California one year later at the behest of the school’s founder. By 1980, Das had ventured out on his own, founding his own dance school while maintaining a rigorous dance schedule.

The famed Indian classical dancer has not limited himself to his own cultural background. He has also worked with Indonesian performers in the cross-cultural touring performance of East as Center. Further, Das worked with tap-dancing phenomenon Jason Samuels Smith, and even opened a dance school in honor of his parents in Kolkata, where students are comprised of those living in lower income classes or working in the city’s infamous red light district.

Taking on dance lessons at the age of nine, Das’s stage career kicked off when Ravi Shankar gave his blessing to the young dancer and invited him to perform at the first Rimpa Festival in Benares. He now joins an elite group of artists, all recognized for their stellar contributions to the arts.

The other awardees are:

• Birmingham Sunlights, A cappella Gospel Group, Birmingham, Alabama
• LeRoy Graber, German-Russian Willow Basketmaker, Freeman, South Dakota
• “Queen” Ida Guillory, Zydeco Musician, San Francisco, California
• Dudley Laufman, Dance Caller and Musician, Canterbury, New Hampshire
• Amma D. McKen, Yoruba Orisha Singer Brooklyn, New York
• Joel Nelson, Cowboy Poet, Alpine, Texas
• Teri Rofkar, Tlingit Weaver and Basketmaker, Sitka, Alaska
• Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, Cambodian Classical Dancer and Choreographer, Long Beach, California
• Edwin Colon Zayas, Cuatro Player, Orocovis, Puerto Rico

The NEA also awarded the 2009 Bess Lomax Hawes Award to musician, cultural scholar and advocate Mike Seeger of Lexington, Virginia for his “significant contribution to the preservation and awareness of cultural heritage.”

According to the NEA, it has awarded 349 National Heritage Fellowships since 1982. Recipients are nominated by members of the general public and then judged by a ten-person panel “of experts in folk and traditional arts on the basis of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers.” The NEA said, in a released statement, its judges considered 240 nominations for the 11 fellowships. Previous fellowship awardees include blues singer B.B. King, cowboy poet Wally McRae, gospel and soul singer Mavis Singer, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe.

The 11 awardees have been invited to Washington, D.C. in September to accept their fellowships with a series of events that include a banquet at the Library of Congress and an awards presentation on Capitol Hill. This year’s awards were made possible by the financial contributions of the Darden Restaurants Foundation.

Established in 1965 as an independent public agency dedicated to supporting the excellence in all forms of art, the NEA is the largest annual financial supporter of the arts.