Padmini Chettur, "Beautiful Thing II"
Padmini Chetur comes from a strong lineage of Bharatnatyam, an ancient dance form, revived after a century of forced amnesia, as a political act in the backdrop of the intellectual movement that rejected the norms of cultural behaviour in a colonial society. Padmini trained under the radical proponent Chandralekha, who aligned the dance with the artistic modern movements in India, and created feminist choreographic works on themes of ancient mathematics and philosophy. Padmini left the troupe, to make her own choreography, migrating the tradition to a minimalist conceptual movement. Her choreography moved even more toward visual language for philosophic ideas of space. She performs her most recent solo work in Paris, made up of revolving vacant shapes. Within Kadist is presented the musical score and performance of an older choreographic work in insect forms. Padmini Chettur (b. 1970) From Chennai, South India