Mrinalini Sarabhai is a celebrated dancer and choreographer and has achieved an international reputation that is unmatched by any contemporary Indian classical dancer. The syntax of her creativity mediates between a moral commitment to traditional form and the desire to claim one’s own experiments as unique, unrepeatable. This interface of technical mastery and creative expressionism achieves a profoundly versatile language of the body - simple, eloquent, visually inspiring. The creative anarchy of her essentially modern style is convincingly disciplined by the taut orthodoxy of her classical technique, learnt from her guru Sri Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai. The result is an exalted visual statement combining almost fanatical purity of vision with modish formal experiments. Read more
Renowned dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai is single-handedly responsible for taking classical Indian dance beyond the shores of India and making Bharatanatyam a dance form that is revered and respected throughout the world.
Born into the highly educated and well-placed Swaminadhan family in Chennai, where the intelligentsia and elite of the time often came visiting, she enjoyed theatre and dance even as a young girl, but it was only in Shantiniketan, under the guidance and encouragement of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and amongst her equally gifted friends, that she realized her true calling. It was in the dance dramas of Tagore that her innate and immense capacity for innovation and experiment was recognized and allowed to flower. After a short stint in America, where she enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she came back to India to seriously pursue a career in dance where, along with Bharatanatyam, she discovered the pristine energy of Kathakali and used it extensively in her compositions. Read more
Mrinalini Sarabhai is a celebrated classical dancer of India. She is the founder director of the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, an institute for imparting training in dance, drama, music and puppetry, in the city of Ahmedabad. She has received many distinguished awards and citations in recognitions of her contribution to art. Read more
In classical Indian dance, Mrinalini Sarabhai is internationally recognized as a dancer and choreographer whose reputation for innovation is unmatched. She began her training at an early age in forms of Bharatnatyam. She was trained in Java and the United States, studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Mrinalini Sarabhai founded Darpana, an academy of dance, drama, music and puppetry, in Ahmedabad, India, in 1948. Read more
Her autobiography.
Contents: Introduction. 1. Father. 2. Mother. 3. Shantiniketan. 4. Study in the USA. 5. Bangalore. 6. Ahmedabad and the Sarabhais. 7. Returning to Bangalore. 8. Cambridge, England. 9. Darpana academy. 10. Experimenting with classical techniques. Read more