Mysuru: City Danseuse Radhika Nandakumar has been awarded the prestigious Fellowship by the Indian Government’s Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) for 2019-2021 for being an outstanding artiste. 

This Fellowship is awarded to only 200 artistes across India and includes all art fields like dance, music, sculpture, literature, photography, video-graphics, etc. She has been awarded the ‘Senior Fellowship’ as she is above 40 years of age and artistes below 40 come under ‘Junior Fellowship’ category. 

In the junior category, Shilpa Nanjappa is the sole recipient (dance) from Karnataka while Radhika Nandakumar is the sole recipient in the senior category. Vocalist T.N. Ashwini from Mysuru has also won the CCRT Fellowship in the field of Karnatak vocal under junior category. 

The CCRT is one of the premier institutions working in the field of linking education with culture and it functions as an autonomous organisation under the aegis of Ministry of Culture, Government of India. 

As a core function, CCRT is committed to holistic education, encompassing the cognitive, emotional and spiritual development of children. It also implements some other important policies of the Ministry of Culture like awarding scholarships to young artistes, junior and senior Fellowships focusing on in-depth study and research in various facets of culture including new emerging areas of cultural studies. 

Radhika Nandakumar is one of the contemporary pioneers of the famed ‘Mysore School of Bharatanatyam’, which can be best described as a body of human expressions that endeavour to attain aesthetic divinity within the disciplines of spatial and melodic configurations. 

A gifted danseuse with distinct individuality, Radhika has developed numerous innovative forms of dance expressions from contemporary life.  Her art focuses in setting up a dynamic equilibrium between textual traditions and Gurukula traditions in dancing.  

She has added a new dimension to contemporary Bharatanatyam by borrowing from the past, for the present and future.  Her restorations are authentic, meaningful, and colourful. Radhika was inspired, initiated into dance by her mother Kalakovide Usha Padmanabhiah (foremost disciple of Natyacharya V.S. Koushik, Founder of Sanatana Kalakshetra, Bengaluru).

Among the umpteen choreography of the original, authentic restorations from the textual sources, Radhika Nandakumar has choreographed some of the most outstanding dance features like Narada Koravanji of Sri Vadiraja Yateendra (perhaps the very first Koravanji ballet in South India) and Navagraha Nritya (based on the concept of the nine planets). 

Radhika has reconstructed the ‘Gaundali Dance Form of Karnataka’.  She had received the CCRT Junior Fellowship to pursue this work and she has dedicated much of her art life these days to bring this art form in all its authenticity to contemporary art stage. 

Now with the CCRT Senior Fellowship for ‘Karnataka Natana Sampradaya’, Radhika wants to pursue a holistic approach that would reveal a sizable magnitude of ‘Karnataka Narthana Sampradaya Paddathi’ whose various dance forms are clearly enunciated in ‘Shastra’ and ‘Shilpa’. 

“An important need of our present day is restoration of creative innovation without sacrificing the historical continuity and traditional values of our art.  This is the original contribution and intention of this research,” she says. 

“Bharatanatyam fraternity in Karnataka is yet to receive its due recognition and research support. Hence, some art forms and traditions have not seen their proper light. I would like to pursue Shastra and Prayoga together that gives a comprehensive continuity to our arts with value-based research,” she explains. 

Her future research will take into account cultural anthropology, aesthetics, musicological research and reconstruction, Vakyartha pedagogy in Sanskrit Ghoshtis, Manuscriptology to refer to original manuscripts, western models for Purva Paksha arguments, available textual treatises with special reference to Karnataka and its culture and references in Kannada literature that describes dance. Her research will enable to find new method of looking into our dance traditions; identify the Guru lineage and their contributions to Natya field. She will identify and choreograph new items of dance and find traditional values in them.