It was Bharathanatyam that first brought the six friends together. It’s again Bharathanatyam that has brought them together to start an enterprise.
Lalitha N., Shivapriya R., Namratha S., Padmashree K., and Preethi M. learnt the dance form under Shrimathi Ranganayaki Jayaraman, director of Saraswathi Gana Nilayam.
They went on to do advance training in bharathanatyam under Shri Narendhra Kumar, director of Anusham School of Dance.
Suvi Kumar, a student of Shri Narendra Kumar, joined these girls and the gang of five became six.
“Apart from bharathanatyam techniques, we were keen on learning the theory and history of the dance form. So, Shivapriya, Padmashree and I did our masters in bharathanatyam,” says Namratha. Each of them holds an MA degree in Bharathanatyam from the Madras University.
The five of them also went to Smt. Lakshmi Ramaswamy, director of Mudraalaya, for classes in Nattuvangam and dance theory.
They are also grade “B” dancers in Doordarshan.
With their experience, they started Mithras school of dance in 2012, renting a play school on weekends.
In July 2013, they pooled their resources to pay for the advance towards renting a place in Royapettah, where they currently teach. They started with five students and now the number has increased to 50.
All of them hold corporate jobs and dedicate their weekends to teaching.
“Six of us have six separate batches,” says Suvi Kumar.
“We concentrate a lot upon having a friendly guru-sishya relationship. We aim at giving them multiple learning experiences.”
Mitras School of Dance recently organised the first arangetram of two of their students at RK Swamy Auditorium, Mylapore.
Mithras School of Dance is located at No 86 Jhani Jhan Khan Road, Royapettah.
Contact 9940295535/9884548262 for details.
