Prashant Kakad is an entertainer based out of Portland OR.
In his previous lifetime, like a good middle class older Indian son would do, Prashant worked at Intel as a Process Engineer for over 3 years, after receiving a graduate degree from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). While at Cornell, Prashant published papers in reputed journals and also got a Patent to make Electrospun nanofiber-based biosensor assemblies, an idea he came up with.
Prashant is presently applying experiences gained at Intel and previously, to follow his passion for entertainment and he advocates the same to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
In September 2009, Prashant left his steady job at Intel to pursue a career in entertainment. This is how the story unfolded…
Prashant started Bollywood singing and dancing at an early age and often won school-college singing competitions in India. After coming to USA in June 2003, he started taking dance seriously, learning dance forms from across the globe including West African, Samba, Hip-Hop, Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Cha Cha Cha, Forro etc. Fusing these international dance forms with what he already knew (Bollywood and Bhangra), Prashant created his own style of dance. While at Cornell Prashant taught courses to undergraduate students for over 2 yrs.
Prashant started teaching dance in Portland OR in June 2006. He has taught over 100 workshops at weddings, fundraisers, private events etc and several 8 week long dance sessions to kids as well as adults culminating to performances, sometimes to a audience of over 2000 people at India Festival in Portland OR.
Prashant is the World Dance Class Faculty for Portland Community College Sylvania Campus as well as for Portland State University‘s World Dance Class for Winter 2010 term.
He thoroughly enjoys Hindustani film and light classical singing, he is very fortunate to learn from Smt Mita Kundu and now Smt Nisha Joshi. Along with like minded talented musicians, Prashant formed Pancham, the newest bollywood band in Portland, they performed to a sold out crowd of 450 people in July 09.
A natural extension of his passion for singing and dancing was that over a decade, Prashant had collected music from across the globe… including but not limited to Old school Bollywood, Bhangra, Latin, Soca, Brazilian, dancehall, … Mystic Balkan beats to popular Hip-Hop and everything in between.
Being an Engineer, Singer, Dancer, Dance Teacher and avid music collector… The progression from Prashant to DJ Prashant was rather organic and seamless.
After doing several successful private parties, fundraisers and house parties, Prashant started DJ’ing once a month (every first Friday) at Pasha Club on August 7th 2009 to a modest crowd of about 75 people.
With each successive party since then, the # of people has grown. On the first Friday of November 2009, Pasha was packed to capacity with over 250 people.
Prashant then embarked on east coast tour to DJ in NYC and DC. Within a weekend Prashant DJ’d for over 14 hours to a capacity crowd of over 300 people each in DC as well as at Kemia Bar, the most popular bollywood dance club in the heart of New York City.
DJ Prashant’s schedule includes resident performances at Pasha (first Friday – International fuzion), Lola’s room at the Crystal Ballroom (3rd Saturday – Pure Bollywood and Bhangra) in Portland OR and at Kemia Bar (4th Saturday – International fuzion in NYC starting January 2010).
Prashant is sincerely thankful for the relentless support of his fans, friends and family!
He hopes to continue to hone his craft and entertain.
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