The internal relation between the dance and the dancer and the external relation between dance and society are questions that cannot be taken lightly, argued dancer-choreographer Chandralekha over three decades ago in a pathbreaking essay, republished here on the occasion of International Dance Day.

Dancer and seminal thinker Chandralekha's 35 years-old lecture, ‘Changing Phases of Bharatanatyam’ sheds light on the need to rethink a new direction for dance. She would have turned 93 today.

Dancer/choreographer Chandralekha’s original essay on the iconography of the female, its deep subconscious power and its potential feminist charge.

On the 91st birthday of dancer-choreographer and writer, Chandralekha, we bring you her extraordinary reflection on women and resistance in the book ‘One More News’, and a poem which became the starting point for debate through artistic expression among women’s groups.

All primary Indian dance forms, originating in primitive and tribal societies, are solidly linked with work activity. Classical forms have not been able to shed the martial and gymnastic poses of forms from which they originated