The global artists dedicating their lives to Indian classical dance

In the mid-1980s in India, when the revival of classical institutionalisation was underway, dancer and scholar Chandralekha explored the origins of Indian dance in an essay on the bodily movement of a performer. Acknowledging the militant and utilitarian histories, she focused on the body’s role by stripping away the aesthetic value of classical dances. What lies beyond the ornamentation, and what is dance beyond the codified traditions? Chandralekha’s questions unfolded against a more complicated history.

On one hand, the colonial ideas of morality shaped the way in which we looked at our traditions of worship and motion; on the other, the trope of the Oriental dancing girl persisted in cities like Paris and Milan, where the bejewelled Mata Hari performed sensually through a crowd of men on a backdrop of Nataraja. Between this tug of war of moral scrutiny and exotic spectacle lies the bodily experience of dance and how it is felt physically and emotionally—by a performer and their audience.

Labour and body in the genre of classical dance cannot be separated from each other. The relationship of a dancer with their body is ever evolving, an odyssey that an individual undertakes when they first bow their heads in front of their gurus. A Mohiniyattam dancer from Paris; an Odissi dancer from China; a Kathak dancer from Germany—what brings them together in this search for selfhood through art? Thomas Vo Van Tao, Lan Wei, and Elena Marr desire to inhabit something beyond themselves. Across geographies and cultural differences, the three of them agree on how the respective dance forms resonated with them at a fairly young age—visual media played a crucial role in the exposure, an attraction that stuck with them and something that made them believe it was worth altering their physical and emotional senses forever.

Thomas Vo Van Tao of Paris took a leap of faith to learn Mohiniyattam when he first saw an Indian classical dance in a documentary on South India when he was around eight or nine years old. “I instantly fell in love and knew this is what I am going to do later in life.” What started with a glimpse on television turned into a practice of Bharatanatyam in France for the first 12 years, and then, finding a strong attraction to the grace of Mohiniyattam. In Kerala, his formal training in Mohiniyattam opened up a whole new world of possibilities and knowledge for him.

Mapping movements in a predominantly female dance form, he considers Mohiniyattam as an art which requires immense patience and restraint. “By the end of it, you feel like your body will evaporate in the air. It kills you from the inside, but I love it.” Unlike other dance forms, Mohiniyattam is performed by women at a steady pace, leaving little to no room for experimenting with energy. Tao believes that training the body for restraint and grace is tougher, and genetic-cultural background does give an upper edge to some people. “While it makes a big difference, it also comes down to the intention and the way in which a dancer interacts with their art. This relationship is also a by-product of access to language, cultural experiences, and knowledge garnered during the time spent in the region. The way a Malayali woman performs Mohiniyattam will inevitably be different from how a non-Malayali performs (beyond genders),” observes Tao.

He also believes that bodies in the global south, beyond South Asia, can move freely and are more agile, as compared to the people in the North. “Asian bodies do move differently. I would like to believe that my mixed Asian heritage did help me develop my movements, unlike a lot of young performers in the West who have to negotiate their bodies in a more deliberate manner. It isn’t easy, but with resilience and patience, it is possible to mould oneself in it.”

In lasya-heavy dance forms like Odissi and Mohiniyattam that are more feminine in nature, the challenge is not of projecting energy outwards but rather to sustain it within. Lan Wei, an Odissi practitioner from Beijing, recounts her days learning the dance form in India, where her love for Odissi led her to the birthplace of the dance form and formally learning it in Odisha. “I stand on the stage to complete a dialogue between space and time, the body and the soul, humans, the world, and nature,” says Lan. For her, Odissi was the end of a search for her calling. It was then that she began her journey of exploring the boundaries of her emotional and physical worlds.

Just like Tao, Lan started with a background in Bharatanatyam, followed by Kathak, and then in Odissi, where she truly feels her belonging lies. “The rhythm of the body is the rhetoric of faith, and true dance should not be a conformity to standards but rather a response to the heart,” she shares. It’s been over a decade of her performing Odissi, and now, there’s no looking back. While her previous two exposures were able to prepare her for the challenges of the dance form, she acknowledges the physical changes it demanded from her.

“It would be a lie to say that Odissi is easy. There have been days when I have practised for eight to 10 hours, but the moment I start to dance, all of it disappears. It reshapes the body from within. The pain is always worth it.”

Lan’s journey also gestures to China and India’s historical intersections in cultural, philosophical, and artistic realms. She finds echoes of Odissi in Dunhuang, a traditional Chinese dance form, which sculptures and historical relics might suggest as cultural merging along the Silk Route. This overlap, historical or intuitive, is a reminder of how bodies carry traces of cultural memory across geographies.

“The performer’s interpretation of the work endows it with soul, which is expressed through the body. I believe the body is an external manifestation of a dance and every dance is a conversation that one has with oneself, embodying the divine order,” she concludes. But the demand of classical dance goes beyond patience and mental strength. It wants you to rewire your body and the way you move, almost like a vessel preparing to hold cosmic knowledge, a collection of bodily movements picked up like jasmine flowers on an October morning, strung into a garland to archive them within oneself.

Elena Marr, a Kathak dancer from Würzburg, thinks her physical training in Kathak has not only moulded her body for the dance, but that transformation has also extended to her life beyond being a dancer. “That grace just spills into my everyday life,” she says. While she acknowledges the physical challenges in terms of footwork (nritya) and expressions (natya), the theoretical depth of the form tests an individual’s keenness to be able to mentally grasp the technicalities of classical dance. For Marr, these were natural progressions and challenges that would persist for someone who is training in a language that doesn’t truly belong to them. But eventually, the experience of music and dance exists beyond borders and is deeply human. Originally from Russia, now residing in Germany, her training in Kathak was prompted by Indian films and music at the age of six. Marr started with Bollywood dance and eventually gravitated towards Kathak, which felt like an instinctive next step. “It was love at first sight, with Kathak, really,” she grins. “When I am dancing, I truly feel I belong to the moment. I can escape the world and give myself entirely to Kathak. It is in those rare moments where my body and mind are in sync.”

The rigour of intricate footwork, the sharp expressions, and countless spins have physically changed Marr’s body; in a way, it also prepared her for motherhood, but it’s the inner change that she feels grateful for. “I am more attuned with myself and nature around me. Kathak has opened up a different world for me, and this is just the beginning of my very long journey with the dance form.”

There is a peculiar relationship a performer shares with their audience. There comes a moment when the emotional intensity of the performance shifts from the body of the dancer to those watching it. It is this moment when we begin to understand why these dance forms stood the test of time, and it is in these fleeting moments that a new dancer is chosen by the universe to carry forward the tradition.

There is a point in every performer’s life when the body, soul, and the art dissolve into each other and become one. It is a moment when one realises that art has truly made a home within their bodies. This moment doesn’t really have a timeline, but it arrives when the body has learned how to handle the past, memory, and the violence that it has withstood. It’s a never-ending journey that hardly concludes. For all three of them, they are still gathering jasmine for their garlands.

This article originally appeared in Harper's Bazaar India's June-July 2026 print issue.

All images: Courtesy Thomas Vo Van Tao, Lan Wei, and Elena Marr

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