Next month, Aishwarya Roshan will begin her first year at the UBC Medical School, which is enough to give anyone the jitters.

But if that's not enough, the Vancouver dancer is also performing her first professional solo show on Saturday (July 7) at Burnaby's Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

It's called Satya: The Ultimate Reality, and the word satya means "truth" in Sanskrit. And she sounded remarkably cool and unflappable as she discussed the show in a recent phone interview with the Straight.

Roshan is a graduate of the Jai Govinda Dance Academy, which teaches the Bharata Natyam Indian classical dance style.

She said that she her dances will demonstrate sentiments of truth and reality.

"For example, while at a surface level, a story may simply tell an event, there exists another force within it to provide us with a deeper understanding of human nature, society, and the world," Roshan said. "And I think the deeper understanding is the truth, so to speak."

While she has been inspired by Hindu scriptures, she emphasized that she plans to stay very broad in her interpretation.

In the early 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi taught the world about the concept of satyagraha, which means "holding onto truth" in Sanskrit. He taught that practitioners could achieve insight into evil by maintaining nonviolence in the mind and seeking truth in a spirit of peace and love while also maintaining rigorous self-awareness.

Roshan, whose family hails from Sri Lanka, said that she's very excited to explore the deeper understanding of truth in the conception of various dance pieces.

She credited her dance guru, Jai Govinda, for encouraging her to make her professional debut.

"He's become one of the world's best Bharata Natyam dancers," Roshan said. "I really hope to follow in his footsteps of diligence and hard work in all my future pursuits."

And yes, this also applies to how she'll approach medical school—and she has no plans to give up her professional dancing career as she moves forward with her studies at UBC.