Anita Raajyalaxmi Ratnam (; born 21 May 1954) is an Indian classical and contemporary dancer and choreographer whose work draws on both classical and contemporary performance traditions. Trained in Bharatanatyam, she has also received formal training in Kathakali, Mohiniattam, tai chi, and Kalarippayattu. She is known for developing "Neo Bharatam", a contemporary movement vocabulary that combines elements of Indian classical dance and other movement traditions.
Early life and education Anita Ratnam was born into the TVS family, which has longstanding associations with South Indian cultural institutions. Her paternal great-grandfather, T. V. Sundram Iyengar, is noted for supporting an early performance by M. S. Subbulakshmi, while her grandfather, T.S. Rajam, served as president of the Madras Music Academy. In interviews, Ratnam has described growing up in a traditional household. She stated that her mother, Leela Ratnam, who had wished to learn dance herself but did not have the opportunity to do so, encouraged her daughter to pursue dance training.
Ratnam began learning dance at the age of three under Rajee Narayan, a family friend and dance teacher. She gave her Arangetram at the age of nine. According to Ratnam, her paternal grandfather, T.S. Rajam, disapproved of her performing in public; however, with the support of her mother and guru, she continued to pursue dance.
She later studied Bharatanatyam under guru Adyar K. Lakshman, before joining Rukmini Devi Arundale's Kalakshetra where she obtained a postgraduate diploma in dance. At Kalakshetra, she studied Bharatanatyam, Sanskrit, and dance theory. Ratnam has credited the teacher Neila Sathyalingam with recognizing and encouraging her interest in exploring movement beyond the conventions of Bharatanatyam.
In addition to Bharatanatyam, Ratnam trained in Kathakali under Balasubramanian of Kerala Kalamandalam and in Mohiniattam under Thottassery Chinnammu Amma.Anita Ratnam She has stated that her training in these traditions significantly influenced her understanding of movement and abhinaya.
Alongside her dance education, Ratnam was active in sports, including tennis, hiking, and swimming. She has recalled that her dance teacher, Adyar K. Lakshman, encouraged her to focus primarily on Bharatanatyam rather than other physical pursuits. She has also described being actively involved in school and college cultural activities, including theater productions, which contributed to her early interest in drama and the performing arts.
At the age of 16, Ratnam performed at the Madras Music Academy in Chennai before an audience including Balasaraswati and M. S. Subbulakshmi.
In her late teens, Ratnam sought greater artistic and personal independence. In 1975, she was offered admission to the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance in New York City. Instead, she chose to pursue graduate studies at the University of New Orleans, where she earned a master's degree in Theater and Television. During her time there, she studied drama and explored a range of artistic disciplines, an experience she has cited as influential in shaping her later work as a performer and choreographer.
Ratnam later completed doctoral research in Women's Studies at Mother Teresa Women's University, Chennai.
Career Over a career spanning more than five decades, Ratnam has worked as a performer, choreographer, television producer, arts entrepreneur, writer, curator, and cultural advocate. She has performed internationally in more than 27 countries.
Television career Ratnam moved to the United States in the mid-1970s, where she temporarily stepped away from performing as a dancer while pursuing a career in television. Between 1976 and 1990, she worked as a television producer and presenter, producing weekly programs featuring Indian news, travel, cinema, and cultural programming for audiences in the United States. Beginning in 1981, she produced and presented Cinema Cinema for Channel 47 low-power TV stations in the United States covering Indian cinema, culture, and current affairs. In 1984, she launched Indigo - The Colors of India, another television programme focusing on Indian arts and culture.
Ratnam has stated that her years in television significantly influenced her later work in dance production, storytelling, stage design and multimedia presentation.
Return to India and Arangham Following her return to India in 1990, Ratnam chose not to resume conventional Bharatanatyam performance. Instead, she began developing a contemporary performance practice rooted in classical movement while drawing upon her experiences in theater and television. She founded Arangham Trust in Chennai in 1992, followed by Arangham Dance Theatre in 1993. Ratnam has stated that the Trust was created to bring together her experience in television and media with her background in indian dance, serving as an umbrella organization for her work in performance, production, documentation, and arts education.
Through Arangham Trust she has organized talks, performances, educational programs, workshops, lecture-demonstrations, and interdisciplinary arts initiatives dedicated to promoting Indian performing arts.
Narthaki.com One of the earliest initiatives of Arangham Trust was Narthaki.com, originally conceived as a printed directory of Indian classical dancers, dance institutions, and cultural organizations. The first edition contained contact information for more than one thousand dancers and dance-related organizations. A second expanded edition, published in 1997, added approximately two thousand further listings.
In 2000, the project evolved into Narthaki.com, an online portal providing information on Indian dance, performers, institutions, festivals, reviews, and related cultural activities. According to Ratnam, the initiative was intended to improve communication among artists, organizers, and audiences while increasing public access to information on Indian dance.
Through Narthaki.com, she has written regularly on issues affecting the Indian dance ecosystem, including arts funding, dance education, performance opportunities and cultural policy.
Narthaki.com has been recognized by the New York Public Library as a resource on Indian dance. The platform later expanded to include digital dance productions, festival curation, interviews, reviews, and other media initiatives.
Kaisika Natakam revival Ratnam has been associated with the revival and documentation of Kaisika Natakam, a traditional temple theater form historically performed at the Vaishnava Nambi and Thirukurungudivalli Nachiar temple in Tamil Nadu. According to The Hindu, her interest in the tradition developed through theater scholar "Nataka" Ramanujan and her longstanding association with Thirukkurungudi, where the performance had historically been presented by Devadasi performers.
Beginning in 1999, Ratnam collaborated with Ramanujan and other scholars and artists to reconstruct the nearly forgotten performance tradition through archival research, oral histories, documentation, and performer training. The project sought to preserve the ritual character of the performance while restoring it to its temple setting rather than adapting it for conventional theater venues.
She has described the revival as an effort to document and preserve an important aspect of Tamil temple performance heritage that risked disappearing following the decline of the Devadasi tradition.
Performing arts initiatives In addition to choreography and performance, Ratnam has curated festivals, conferences, and educational programmes devoted to Indian performing arts.
She co-founded and co-curated The Other Festival, described as India's first annual contemporary dance festival. In 2013, she organized Purush, a conference examining the contribution of male dancers to Indian classical dance.
Ratnam has organized numerous performance platforms featuring both established and emerging artists and has incorporated pre-performance talks into several productions to provide audiences with historical and artistic context. She has also delivered lectures and conducted workshops for universities, cultural organizations, corporate institutions, and youth forums.
Cultural leadership Ratnam has served on advisory and executive bodies connected with Indian cultural policy and the performing arts, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and the committees of the Ministry of Culture (India). She is a voting member of the Dance Critics Association in the United States, and a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. Ratnam has also served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Riverside, where she has lectured on Indian dance and performance traditions.
Other activities According to Ratnam, curiosity has been a driving force throughout her career, describing her artistic approach as a 360-degree cultural ecosystem encompassing choreography, production, theater, writing, curation, technology, and arts administration. She has also emphasized the importance of training dancers not only in performance but also in production, technical theater, and professional practice.
She has stated that she deliberately chose not to establish a conventional dance school, stating that this decision allowed her greater freedom to pursue choreography, experimentation, and new artistic directions.
In 2000, Ratnam made her film acting debut in Rajeev Menon’s Kandukondain Kandukondain.
Neo Bharatam
Concept and development According to Ratnam, the term "Neo Bharatam" emerged in 1999 after she watched the film The Matrix and identified with the character Neo, portrayed by Keanu Reeves. She has said that the concept reflected both her multidisciplinary artistic training and her desire to develop an approach that extended beyond conventional boundaries of Indian classical dance. She has described Neo Bharatam as both a movement vocabulary and a contemporary artistic philosophy rooted in Indian classical dance while incorporating theater, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new choreographic approaches.
Drawing on her training in Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, Tai chi, Kalaripayattu, and Yoga, Ratnam developed "Neo Bharatam", a movement language combining elements of these disciplines for contemporary performance and storytelling. She has acknowledged theater director Na. Muthuswamy of Koothu-P-Pattarai as an important influence during her search for a contemporary performance language. She has also questioned the exclusive emphasis on conventional Abhinaya in Indian classical dance, describing Natya as an integration of speech, movement and music.
Themes and artistic philosophy According to Ratnam, her choreographic practice emerged from a desire to move beyond traditional dance narratives, particularly conventional representations of women in classical literature. She described her performances as focusing on stronger female perspectives and themes relating to women's experiences, identity and agency.
Drawing on her Sri Vaishnava heritage, Ratnam frequently revisits mythological narratives through contemporary perspectives, exploring themes including devotion, identity, resistance, and feminine agency. Her choreographic work seeks to re-examine traditional representations of women in mythology through contemporary interpretations.
She has argued that artists should engage with political and social issues through artistic practice rather than direct activism.
Performance style