dr. smitha radhakrishnan
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. She has trained continuously with prominent Bharatanatyam teachers in the U.S. and India since age 5. She also spent over 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 is the Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College.
Dr. Radhakrishnan has performed in hundreds of solo and group productions at prestigious and community venues alike in New England, California, and Arizona. In South Africa, she performed and taught extensively with the Surialanga Dance Company of Durban, often in principal roles. Dr. Radhakrishnan currently directs and performs with natya dance collective, an ensemble of rigorously trained Bharatanatyam dancers based in the Boston area. natya collectively creates dance that challenges the boundaries between classical, contemporary, and folk dance. natya has produced three original evening-length productions at the Dance Complex, all of which have been supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Most recently, the Collective presented Radical Love: A Collective Movement (2024).
abstract
Dance in the Boston Ethos
Panel Discussion