LAKSHMI SWAMINATHAN
Lakshmi Swaminathan trained in bharatanatyam under the able guidance of Guru Dr. Thankamani Kutty, director of Kalamandalam, Calcutta. During her days as a solo dancer, Lakshmi has performed extensively in India, The United Kingdom, Singapore and the United States. She was also a graded artist in Doordarshan, the National television channel of India and has several local television performances to her credit.
Lakshmi’s lifelong passion for dance led her to establish Natananjali School of Dance in Bethesda, MD, with the aim to train a new generation of bharatanatyam dancers in the United States, while imparting a love for the art form, as well as enabling them to stay connected to their Indian roots.
Lakshmi was also an artist with the New York chapter and Maryland chapter of Young Audiences/Arts for Learning, a national organization for arts in education for almost nineteen years. Through this program she presented assembly performances and dance workshops, educating the students in Indian Classical Dance.
Lakshmi hosts a monthly TV show on Channel 30- World 30, produced by GTV titled “The World Of Bharatanatyam”, through which she aims to educate the viewers on the fine nuances of this beautiful dance form.
In 2010 Lakshmi performed at the first ever Diwali celebrations held by the Montgomery County Executive Offices in the presence of several Indian-American dignitaries, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, Maryland State Senator Robert J. Gargiola, and several other elected officials.
An avid choreographer, Lakshmi has composed several dance numbers in the solo as well as group choreography format. She has several jatiswarams, shabdams, kritis, bhajans, varnams, and thillanas to her credit. Lakshmi also had the wonderful of opportunity of composing dance to the popular song, “Sing Sing a song”, sung by Bob McGrath of Sesame Street fame. This was presented by Natananjali dancers at the closing ceremony of The International Children’s festival 2010, where they had the opportunity to dance to Bob McGrath’s live vocal rendition of the song.
In Oct 2016, Lakshmi was featured as the face of Indian immigrants in the photo exhibit entitled, Faces of Montgomery, in The New Americans Expo 2016.
PC: David Frey
Organizing fundraisers for good causes and charity is something Lakshmi believes in very strongly. To that effect, Lakshmi donates the proceeds of her annual show to worthy causes. The proceeds of the annual show in the past years have been donated to Prajwala, Kalamandalam Performing Arts and Research Center, National Center for Children and Families, Cherish International Inc, SHOFCO, Pratham USA, and Smile Train. In addition, Lakshmi has also organized fundraisers for the Murugan Temple of North America and in collaboration with other local area dance teachers, has successfully raised funds for the earthquake victims in Haiti, through The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Charity Water, as well as SOS- Children’s Villages to name a few, through the annual dance show, Shivanjali. In Jan 2016 Lakshmi organized a fundraiser, along with local DC metro area dancer teachers, for Chennai flood victims, called “Healing through Dance”. And in Jan 2017, Lakshmi organized a fundraiser benefitting Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington DC, along with local DC metro area dance teachers. In 2018, Lakshmi organized a fundraiser for the Kerala flood victims, through the program “Healing through Dance”.
Lakshmi has served as a panelist for Artists and Scholars Projects grants, awarded by the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County.
In addition, Lakshmi is also collaborating with a friend and colleague, Malini Sekhar, in a creative experimental process, Dhirana Movement, where they aim to innovate and expand using bharatanatyam as the foundation.
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