Remembering Bharatnatyam dancer and producer Kamalini Nagarajan Dutt
Odissi exponent Sharon Lowen pays tribute to the legacy of Kamalini Nagarajan Dutt, a renowned Bharatnatyam dancer & former producer-director at Doordarshan
The worlds of art, culture and spirituality has lost a towering personality as Smt Kamalini Nagarajan Dutt left us (1950-2025). It would be difficult to say whether her public contributions as Doordarshan producer and director of over a thousand programmes, founder-director of the digitised Doordarshan Archives, and selective Bharatanatyam guru are as great as her private contributions as a guide to a pantheon of performing artistes, including the most celebrated, who owe much of their interpretive abilities and brilliant concepts to Kamalini’s generosity in sharing the breadth and depth of her knowledge of Indian languages, literature and philosophy. She was my Kalanmitra, spiritual friend, as well as a collaborator on dozens of productions for stage and television.
From the age of four she was totally immersed in classical education of Sanskrit and Thanjavur Bharatanatyam training under Devadasi Lakshmikantamma and from Guru Skkil Ramaswami Pillai (Thatha) in Delhi from 1962 to 1972. Her dance training was unique in several ways, imparted with insights into literature, poetry, music and spirituality to a degree that hardly exists today. She also trained in Kuchipudi with late Vedantam Prahalada Sharma and Odissi with late Guru Debaprasad Das, topped off with a BA in Hindi Literature. With virtually all legends and texts in multiple languages stored in her photographic memory, she became the “go-to” person for selecting texts for choreography amongst professional dancers of all genres.
Dr Arshiya Sethi’s Kri Foundation award certificate states, “Using her understanding of dance, she created a large body of work, of over a thousand programmes, in a career that spanned over thirty-eight years, that depict a rare sensitivity to and capture a luminous beauty in dance. All dancers vied to be recorded by her, for they understood that the digital footprint she created would frame their talent and brilliance in a memorable manner. Many of the productions have gained appreciation, praise and awards for their high artistic merit and aesthetic standards, as she set new trends in televising music and dance, especially classical forms.”
She is survived by her daughter and disciple, Purvadhanshree, one of today’s most accomplished Vilasini Natyam and Bharatnatyam artists.
-Written by Sharon Lowen
