Chitra Ramaswamy

Lives her life with a perfect blend of East and the West. It has been 25 plus years since she has been living in the USA, originally from Tamil Nadu, India.

An epitome of truth and purity, a synergy across time and space and believer of equality, Chitra is practical and pragmatic, balancing her IT job and her Dance. She is an engineer and enjoys her IT profession equally as being a Dancer / Choreographer and Teacher in Bharatanatyam.

She passionately talks about her Dance, as her companion in life, she fell in love with this dance form when she was 5 years. Destiny introduced her to first Guru Padma Shri Adyar K. Laksmanan, who helped her in understanding and learning the finer nuances of dance as well as life. He helped her to envision dance as an art form beyond fame, fortune, name and seniority. In his class, each one excelled in one’s own pace and learned the joy and delight of experiencing the other's performance. Her devotion for him as Guru is unparalleled.

She continues to follow the path as laid down by her guru, and appreciates and learns from various artists irrespective of their personal style and preferences. She looks up to each artist, draws inspiration and ideates the same into her style and performance. Her strength lies in her ability to visualise a story through the eyes of the audience creating an imagery which is vivid and picturesque.

She can get very emotional when she talks about her best companion in life - Her Dance, the love for which started at the age of 5 after watching the great Dancer Dr. Padma Subramaniam.
Continuing the path laid by her first Guru Padmashree Adyar. K.Laksmanan, says she learned the finer nuances of life from his classes. To see dance as an art form beyond the need for money, categorizing students as juniors and seniors, and bringing unhealthy competition. Instead, Her Guru’s dance class was a place where one excelled one’s own progress and there was joy and delight watching each other perform and learn from each other. Above all, there was joy and with full of passion for the art and love and devotion for the Guru.

She also continues to follow the belief that whatever styles of dance it may be, there is always something to learn from the person, and if so she looks up to the person and lives to learn and ideate her styles and performances too.

Her strength lies in being able to visualize the theme/story in the eyes of an on-looker which helps her to create the imagery in a manner that is most vivid and picturesque.

It’s her mission to be able to take this form to the next level of being able to depict a combination of modern and traditional themes which can lure the next generation and thereby also introduce them to our rich culture and heritage without losing out on the crux of the art.

Her productions not only include performances of Mahabharata or Ramayana, but She also has Lion King and Pied Piper / Krishna in her performances and musicals. During the pandemic times, She has also been able to work on a long-time dream of bringing the Amar Chitra Katha visuals to a dance form and the work is in progress.

All her life even while she had to move out of her dance lessons to pursue engineering or even when she left for the US, she did continue to be her best companion with her, and everywhere she had some opportunities in whatever small way she found to practice dance she grabbed them without any hesitation.

Her story is a wonderful one of a deep sense of love towards dance and the beautiful way she pursued the same without any fuss of life, with the utmost genuineness and sincerity she could offer even when life wasn’t always showing her a straight path to pursue her dreams.

She is an excellent leader and orchestrator, well-grounded and compassionate, taking inputs from all her musicians and teachers, helping artists in need, thus bringing an essence of harmony in her life and work.