multidisciplinary artist. choreographer. movement educator. researcher. writer
Having received her early training in Bharatanatyam in Singapore, she went on to spend over two decades learning, teaching, creating and performing in India as well as in Singapore.
She has also studied dance theory, Nattuvangam (vocal percussion), as well as Carnatic and Hindustani vocal music. She is known for her innovative multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach in artistic praxis with the ability to sensitively blend traditional Asian dance and theatre forms, contemporary themes and movement practices, music, rhythm, voice and text within a contemporary facili-actor framework. Her quest for autonomy, self-awareness and sensorial perception in dance led her to the Japanese dance theatre form, Butoh. She received training in this evolving form both in London and Singapore. Her research work employed an ethnographic approach to explore the practice of Butoh in the UK.
She consistently problematizes boundaries of time, place, gender, and caste, among other social constructs. Her social justice perspective leads her to interrogate existing inequalities and use the body and the performance space as a way of addressing them.
A recipient of various awards including the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award (Singapore), Singar Mani (Mumbai) and Balasaraswati Endowment Award (Chennai),her artistic works include Neene Anatha Bandhu (1992), Sarvam Brahma Mayam (1997), Outcaste Eternal (1999), Moments in Time (2002), Crossroads (2003), Then and Now (2003), Radha Now (2006), This & That (2009), From Ishta Devata to Ishta Devata (2009), I watched the flowers (2012), I Carry Your Heart (2015), The Vanishing Point ? (2015), Supermoon (2016), Charting the Multiverse of our Dreams (2017) and The Problematic Danseuse (2020).
She graduated with a Master’s degree in Dance Anthropology (with distinction) from the University of Roehampton, London. As researcher and writer, she bridges dance practice with theory. Her research interests include kinesthesia and corporeality, gender, tradition and transition, site specificity, cultural hybridisation and the politics of identity.
Her M.A Dissertation Shifting Representations of the Nayika (Heroine) in Bharatanatyam examined Bharatanatyam as a site for feminist intervention, facilitating the emergence of empowering alternatives to the traditional representation of the female dancer. She reviewed and wrote on dance for publications in Singapore, India and U.K. Her chapter Bharatanatyam and Butoh: An Emerging Gendered Conversation Through Site Specific Dance in Chennai and Singapore has been published in the book “The Moving Body: Women in Dance” (2017). Her paper The Problematic Danseuse: Reclaiming Space to Dance the Lived Feminine was published in “Diotima’s: A Journal of New Readings” (2017).
She has presented workshops regularly at schools in Singapore and at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. After 20 years of training and practice in Yoga, she also began devising a wellness and creativity- focused mind-body technique – ANTARIKA, which she now imparts. She is the Founder & Director of Antarika Pte Ltd, has been an artist collaborator at the Lalu Lalang Laboratory (L3), and is currently an Associate Member at Dance Nucleus, Singapore.