Deepa Mahadevan

🪔 About

Dr. Deepa Mahadevan is an artist scholar, Bharatanatyam practitioner, researcher, teacher, choreographer, and curator. She began her Bharatanatyam training at the age of five in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and also received training in South Indian classical (Carnatic) music, Yoga, and Kalari Payattu. She is a disciple of Guru Usha Srinivasan and Madurai R Muralidharan, tracing her hereditary lineage to Nattuvanar K.N. Dandayudapani Pillai, who was her teacher Usha Srinivasan's Guru. Deepa Mahadevan also trained in Odissi and performed the style for a decade. With over three decades of experience as a performer and teacher, Dr. Mahadevan founded the Tiruchitrambalam School of Dance in 2004, where she has trained over 200 students and conceived, choreographed, and conducted more than 30 evening-length solo dance recitals for them. Her practice emphasizes improvisation and creating work 'with the audience.' She completed her PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis, and is a published scholar. Her doctoral research, conducted between the 1930s and 2020, explores the history of aesthetics in Bharatanatyam through the vectors of caste, class, sexuality, gender, and religion. She is also the founder of 'Matrusena,' a non-profit art organization dedicated to opening up Bharatanatyam practice to a radical epistemology addressing gender, caste, class, sex, religion, and ableism. Deepa Mahadevan is based in the North American diaspora (Union City, CA, NY, New Jersey) and Lisbon, Portugal.