Byb Chanel Bibene is a dance educator, choreographer and performer. He is the founder and artistic director of both Kiandanda Dance Theater @kiandandadt and the Mbongui Square Festival.

Byb's innate technical and aesthetic sensibility is rooted in the culture and dances of the Republic of Congo, and his professional foci are the interdisciplinary areas of theater, traditional, Afro-urban and contemporary dance. Byb brings an innovative approach to his concepts and choreography, and has performed internationally and toured throughout the world with companies originating from Africa, Europe and the United States.

Mashal Peerzada @mashalpeeru is a dramatic writer and director for theatre, film and television, who has trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and is a graduate of the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles, California. Mashal is a passionate believer in connecting, educating and empowering individuals through the arts. Seeking untold stories and creating avenues of exploration and rediscovery is central to the work of Yellow Brick @yellowbrickcd which is a creative learning and content development company that uses the arts to create authentic, inclusive and inspirational content as a medium of advocacy, equity, collaboration and communication.

Much of what Mashal is and believes has been formed by the stories and movies of a childhood spent steeped in an amalgamation of Tolkien, Star Wars, The Arabian Nights, Winnie the Pooh, The Shahname, Bladerunner and Lewis Caroll - this allows her to embrace the impossible, create without fear and believe without hesitation in the magical power of stories and the arts.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto @zulfikaralibhutto is an artist and curator whose work resurrects complex histories in the South Asian, South West Asian and North African region. In the process he unpacks the intersections of religion, storytelling, futurity and environmental degradation through a multi-media practice rooted in printmaking, textile and performance.

Zulfikar is currently based in Karachi, Pakistan, after receiving MAH in History of Art from the University of Edinburgh in 2014 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016. has shown work and curated exhibitions globally, as well as spoken extensively on the intersections of faith, radical thought and futurity at Columbia University, UC Berkeley, NYU, Stanford and the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.

Nadia Payan @nadiapayan 's life's play and work include her being an artist, TEDx speaker, circle facilitator and montessorian devoted to conscious creativity, community care and embodied interconnection. Nadia is also a creative healing practitioner, meditator and meditation guide, lover of beauty, subtle energy observer and worker, a human work-in-progress, a divine spiritual being, as she believes, all of us are.

Muneeb ur Rehman @dramajik is an Applied Performance Practitioner, and Acting and Improvisation coach from Pakistan, employing performance and drama across different human contexts for wellness, development, education, research, creativity, entertainment and community. As an actor, he has performed in theatrical productions of various genres and styles. Drawing from his experience as performer on stage and teacher in the classroom, Muneeb recognized the potential of performance in learning processes and since 2015, has been developing an enabling performance pedagogy, and partners with schools, NGOs, youth programs, corporations and community programs. He works actively with children of all age-groups to draw their creativity and imagination through performance, has initiated a teachers training program that employs dramatic methodology to make classroom teaching personalized, effective and fun and is also developing a performance-based training program for a research institute that sensitizes technologists and designers to complex human factors in design processes.

And if all of this isn't enough, Muneeb also wears a red-cherry nose as a medical clown, performing participatory shows for children with cancer in curative and palliative care, as part of their psycho-social well-being.

Misha Japanwala @mishajapanwala is a Pakistani artist and fashion designer whose work celebrates women's bodies. Her body casts, worn as sculptural garments, blur the lines between fashion and fine art, clothing and nudity, freedom and censorship. Misha's work attempts to reclaim the way women's bodies have historically been depicted in art, and subvert the male gaze and colonist beauty standards from the way we see real bodies.

Misha’s work has been photographed and written about in numerous publications including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and i-D, and she has created custom pieces for women including Cardi B, Gigi Hadid, Halsey and Joy Crookes. She was recently honoured on the Forbes Under 30 List. Her work continues to be an explorative and radical celebration of women, their agency and their bodies.

Wahab Shah is a Pakistani Dancer, Actor, performer, choreographer and director of international calibre. He has choreographed projects for some of the heavy weights throughout South Asia including AR Rahman, Atif Aslam, Rahat Fateh Ali khan, Abida Parveen, Sonu Nigam, Balvinder Safri, Usha Uttup, and Merchants of Bollywood, to name just a few.

After acquiring his BA in acting from TAFE Australia, training with various companies in Sydney, and forming his own company "Eastern Flavas Dance Company" in 2003, Wahab marked his presence in Pakistan at the Sufi Festival in 2006. His trademark contemporary Sufi dance style has set benchmarks and is regarded as the identity of modern dance from Pakistan, and Wahab performs extensively as part of showcases for international delegations representing the culture of Pakistan.

In addition to his brilliant artistry, Wahab has a genuine desire to change the way Pakistanis see and experience all forms of dance, hoping to stretch beyond the boundaries of the perceptions of what dance can be, and ultimately, to share its power, beauty and humour with a broad audience.

Ami Park is an Actor + Abundance Coach with her program, Awakened Joy @awakenedjoycollective

Since childhood Ami has been pursuing acting. After graduating with a BA from Boston University, Ami moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Television and Film, and it became clear that she was going to chart her own path as an Asian woman in this industry.

Ami realized that she wanted to share all the tools and tips that guided her to achieving much of what she had visualized for herself, which is where her program, Awakened Joy, came into existence.

The actor was able to manifest her dream talent manager, an incredible community, a recurring Korean American on her dream show, "This is Us", attract financial abundance, and the list goes on. The most important thing Ami realized is that it's not about the external wins that will make you fulfilled, it's what's going on in our inner lives - abundance is all about feeling good.

We welcome back one of our previous guests Amit Patel @_amitdances and newcomer to the Heartistry Talk Show, Ishika Seth @ishika_dance as we hear about their upcoming project and performance "Unearthed: Untold Stories from The Ramayana". @unearthed.show is a dance and music production that excavates the stories of forgotten voices in the Hindu epic, Ramayana. Bringing forth diverse perspectives, Amit and Ishika examine these stories in a modern context, relating them to current social and political themes, using the idiom of Indian Contemporary dance movement, music and narration directed and performed by Amit and Ishika and their amazing collaborators!

Hip hop in Pakistan?! You heard right! Listen to this week's episode and be inspired by the journey of Bboy/Hip Hop dancer, Taishi @taishi_anarchy and how dance saved his life.

Hear how the dance style and the culture of Hip Hop is growing and evolving in what might seem like an unlikely place, and how the Hip Hop community is creating a supportive and inclusive culture for all who are interested. Taishi is also one of the co-founders of Anarchy @weareanarchy - a Hip Hop freestyle crew based in Karachi, Pakistan.