‘Dance is my breathing, my survival, my everything’: Mohiniattam exponent Sunanda Nair

For 62-year-old Sunanda Nair, the journey from the Mumbai suburb of Goregaon to the world stage was never mapped out as a career plan. But dance simply kept opening doors.

Nair began learning bharatanatyam when she was six, took up kathakali a few years later and eventually found her artistic identity in mohiniattam.

In between, she became the first student in India to earn a bachelor’s degree (in 1989) and master’s (in 1991) in this dance form practised in Keralam. Then Nair upgraded to a doctorate (2016) with a thesis titled “The Intrinsic Lyrical Feminism in Mohini Attam” at Mumbai’s Nalanda Nritya Kala Mahavidyalaya. where she learnt dance, taught and discovered herself.

When Nair moved to the US in 2000 because her husband got a job there, she did not arrive with a mission to establish herself as a performer or teacher. In fact, she thought she might stop dancing altogether. Instead, students came looking for her. Performances followed. An accidental new start grew into a sustained effort to teach, perform and present an Indian classical form to American audiences without diluting its character.

Her effort was recognised on August 13, when Nair received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in the Overseas category for 2024. She became the...

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