A versatile personality, Madhu Nataraj dons the hats of a performer, choreographer, educator and arts entrepreneur and has recently received the Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar from the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi. Dance has been a way of life with Madhu; her mother was iconic Kathak dancer Maya Rao but Madhu chose to veer away from the traditional dance form and embrace the modern leading to an amalgamation of various disciplines to come up with a unique dance form called STEM.
Madhu will be here in Kochi for a dance workshop in Kathak, which is claimed to be the first of its kind in a state known for its patronage of dance forms Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattom and Kathakali. Madhu hopes that dance lovers in Kerala would take a shine to the dance form of Kathak. She has huge appreciation for the audience in Kerala and says, “The people of Kerala make wonderful audiences and I have performed there for years and I feel everyone here from all strata of society have an opinion about your dance which I think is great!
Having people engage in the art is great and so Kerala is fertile ground for such camps. Another place which has a responsive audience like this is Kolkata.” Incidentally, Madhu went to the US and trained in contemporary dance there and though she could have made a profession of it in New York, returned to India with a vision to create a unique dance company with its own distinctive contemporary Indian dance identity— the Natya STEM Dance Kampni. She explains the reasons, “When you grow up in an environment filled with dance, there comes a point as a teenager when you rebel and I decided that I would not be doing what everybody expects me to do. So I pursued many other streams before coming back to dance and one of them was contemporary dance. I was offered a scholarship in New York but I wanted to create an Indian contemporary identity for my dance, so I started the dance company 21 years ago.” Natya was started by her mother and Madhu started STEM and merged both.
Shedding more light on STEM, Madhu explains, “It stands for Space, Time, Energy and Motion. When I came back, I missed the fragrance of India which reminded me of my identity as an artiste. I revisited the forms that I had run away from, like Kathak and also Indian martial arts like Kalaripayattu and yoga.” Madhu’s signature style has always been collaboration. Right from her first production, it has been a collaboration of various artistes. Emerging out of motifs of Indian movement disciplines, original music, interactive design and multiple collaborations with dancers, musicians, designers and litterateurs, the Kampni has evolved its own distinct signature style. With the death of her mother two years back, Madhu has taken up the directorship of three verticals.
When Madhu teaches Kathak, she uses the methodology and learning of her mother, who learnt from her gurus, but adds a few more global trends, thereby making it more relevant for today’s audience. She started the dance company at a time when the concept was still very nascent in people’s minds and faced initial opposition, but the audience loved it because they were seeing a dance form in all its pristine purity and something that was relevant and which they could understand and take back. As an arts entrepreneur, Madhu believes that dance is a potent medium for change in the public domain. Ranging from education, social issues, creativity and documentation to healing, her projects aim to materialise this philosophy.
Madhu is also someone who loves travelling and has travelled to 40 countries. Travelling has opened new vistas of learning for her. She states, “Travel is my oxygen and I am not one of those people who splurges on jewellery and clothes but travel is more important to me than anything else in life. We are finally a storehouse of experiences and in our final journey what we take back is our experiences. Our body has memory banks and I believe travel opens up the mind and aids the creative mind of an artiste and I am proud that I have travelled to the far nooks and corners of the country as a part of my dance performances.”
