Thirteen years ago, Uma Nambudiripad Sathyanarayanan and her parents shifted from Nagpur to Chennai. That move was the right step for her career in dance. Regarded as one of the finest young Bharatanatyam dancers in the country, she received the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar award from the Kendra Sangeeta Natak Akademi recently.
“Winning the Sangeeta Nataka Akademi award means a lot to me. It is recognition like this that tells me that my decision to move to Chennai was the right one,” says Uma, who was in Kozhikode for a performance.
She adds: “I was lucky that I got Chitra Visweswaran as my guru. I had received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and my first dance teacher Sreemathy, who had been training me since the age of six in Nagpur, told me that I should try to be a disciple of Chitra,” says Uma, who was born at Pattambi, in Palakkad district.
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Uma says that since she has been a fan of Chitra’s dance, she considers it an honour to have shared the stage with her on quite a few occasions. “I really enjoyed playing Andal to her Meera in ‘Dwarakanatham Bhaje’, a production choreographed by her,” she says.
Though she is doing mostly margam these days, she enjoys the challenges of choreographing new ideas as well. “I have recently choreographed a complete production in Abhang, based on the works of Tukaram and Namdev. It is entirely in Marathi, a language I am comfortable in, having grown up in Maharashtra. Another production I enjoyed choreographing was ‘Pillai Thamizh’, which deals with different stages of childhood described in Tamil literature. I did a joint production, ‘Sakhyam’, with Lakshmi Parthasarathy Athreya,” she says.
Uma is also a trained Carnatic vocalist. “I have always been interested in music, but dance is my first love. I like singing for dance performances, especially for my guru. I learnt music from my guru’s husband, the late R. Visweswaran,” says Uma.
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She feels a lot could be done to promote classical dances in the country. “It is very tough being a professional dancer, especially for people like me who come from humble backgrounds. I think our government and the media should do more to promote our classical art forms,” she signs off.