Nirmala Seshadri

🪔 About

Nirmala Seshadri is a Singapore-nurtured Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer, researcher, and educator known for her innovative and multidisciplinary approach to classical Indian dance. She received her early training in Bharatanatyam in Singapore and subsequently spent over two decades learning, teaching, creating, and performing in both India and Singapore. Her extensive training includes dance theory under the guidance of noted scholar and musicologist T.S. Parthasarathy and Nattuvangam from Karaikudi Krishnamurthy. Seshadri furthered her academic pursuits by graduating with a Master's degree in Dance Anthropology with distinction from the University of Roehampton, London. Her artistic praxis is characterized by a sensitive blend of traditional Asian dance and theatre forms, contemporary themes, and diverse movement practices, incorporating music, rhythm, voice, and text. Her quest for autonomy and sensorial perception in dance led her to explore the Japanese dance theatre form, Butoh, in which she also received training in London and Singapore. As a researcher and writer, she bridges dance practice with theory, with interests spanning 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 the dance form as a site for feminist intervention. Seshadri is the Founder and Director of Antarika Pte Ltd, an institution dedicated to a wellness and creativity-focused mind-body technique called ANTARIKA, which integrates elements from Bharatanatyam, Butoh, breathwork, Yoga, and Mindfulness. She has choreographed and performed numerous works, including "Neene Anatha Bandhu" (1992), "Outcaste Eternal" (1999), "Radha Now" (2006), and "The Problematic Danseuse" (2020). She has also served on the Board of the National Arts Council in Singapore. Awards & Honours: Young Artist Award, Singar Mani, Balasaraswati Endowment Award.