Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan

🪔 About

Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan is a lifelong diasporic Bharatanatyam dancer focused on how traditional vocabularies of expressive movement can connect with contemporary personal, social, and political struggles. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she has trained continuously with prominent Bharatanatyam teachers in the U.S. and India since age five, including Asha Gopal (Phoenix), Katherine Kunhiraman (Berkeley), Padmini Ravi (Bangalore), Girija Chandran (Thiruvananthapuram), Prakriti Bhaskar (Mumbai), Chitra Chandrasekar Dasarathy (Bangalore), and Dr. Aparna Sindhoor (Boston and Los Angeles). She also spent a decade training in contemporary dance, theatre, and Indian martial arts while performing and touring with Navarasa Dance Theater (Boston and Los Angeles).Dr. Radhakrishnan has performed in hundreds of solo and group productions in major venues across New England and in California. In South Africa, she performed and taught extensively with the Surialanga Dance Company of Durban, often in principal roles. In 2003, she co-founded the original NATyA Dance Company with fellow dancer Vallari Shah. They co-produced and performed over 80 shows all over the California Bay Area, including four original productions.Dr. Radhakrishnan is the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. An award-winning feminist sociologist focused on questions of gender and economic change, she is a vocal advocate for transformative racial and gender justice. Dr. Radhakrishnan serves on the boards of Navarasa Dance Theater and the Boston Dance Alliance.