ST. LOUIS – The dance community is searching for answers to the murder of a rising star from India who was gunned down on a St. Louis street. Reactions came from all over the world following the murder of this one-of-a-kind Washington University student.
Amarnath Ghosh performed this past summer at the Battery Dance Festival in New York City. Battery Dance’s founder and artistic director, Jonathan Hollander, flew to St. Louis from New York to honor Ghosh.
“It hit me really hard because I’d seen him on stage, alive…six months ago and he’s gone. For myself, I just needed some way to process this unthinkable act of violence and gun violence,” Hollander said.
Ghosh was shot and killed on the evening of Feb. 27 on Delmar Boulevard near Clarendon Avenue. It was the dancer’s neighborhood, less than a mile from where he lived. Police found him dead in the street, with no reported leads.
Ghosh was just two months shy of receiving his Master of Fine Arts from Washington University. Hollander, who helped Ghosh come to the U.S. on a student visa, said the degree was simply desired and not required.
“He was a very rare artist in the sense that there are many different classical dance forms in India, and he had graduated from two of the most illustrious academies in each of two different forms. That’s very unusual,” Hollander said. “He was such a maestro, such a master at a young age of the technique and artistry of these Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam dance forms, really remarkable.”
Veteran St. Louis dance instructor Prasanna Kasthuri received phone calls of disbelief from people in four different countries.
“It is a shock, not only for me (but for) every dancer across the globe; students and performers are all shocked,” he said. “Most of the Indian students come here to study computer science and engineering, medicine but this person came to study arts—dance. So not many people try to come to America from India to learn dance.”
Kasthuri and Hollander are hopeful that the crime will be solved and Ghosh will be remembered.
“We often feel, those of us in the dance field, that it’s a very ephemeral art form. There’s nothing left behind except the memory. It’s on stage, it enlightens, it surprises, it enriches one, but then it’s over and we don’t want Amarnath’s memory to be lost,” Hollander said.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call CrimeStoppers at (314) 725-8477.
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