There is a certain precision to Madhu Nataraj. Warm and unfailingly polite, she has the composed presence of someone accustomed to holding herself and others to a high standard. She speaks with remarkable clarity, moving through ideas with the ease of someone who is constantly examining, connecting and questioning them. The Natya Institute of Kathak and Choreography in Malleswaram feels like an extension of that sensibility. Plants spill through its spaces, brass catches the light at every turn, and the warm glow of a bulb mingles with trails of incense smoke. Traditional Indian paintings sit alongside contemporary works, creating a space that feels at once deeply rooted and distinctly her own. Even during a conversation about choreography, her eye remains tuned to composition: she notices the triangular formation made by the coffee cups on the table and remarks on how beautiful the shape would look on stage.

That instinct to find connections between seemingly different forms is central to Nataraj’s practice. She describes herself as an “intersectionist”, interested in the cross-illumination between different disciplines and forms. Her work brings together Kathak and contemporary dance with folk and martial traditions, yoga, theatre, visual art, music and technology, often taking dance beyond the conventional stage and into public spaces, heritage sites and other unexpected environments.

Trained in Kathak under her mother, the pioneering choreographer Dr Maya Rao, and later in contemporary dance at New York’s José Limón Centre, Nataraj has spent more than three decades developing a practice that resists neat categories. In 1995, she founded STEM Dance Kampni — Space.Time.Energy.Movement — as the performing wing of the Natya Institute, which Maya Rao established in Delhi and brought to Bangalore in 1987.

With more than 200 choreographies to her credit, Nataraj’s work has explored everything from feminism, sexuality and violence to Indian heritage, mythology and the possibilities of the body itself. Her productions have brought Kathak into dialogue with Flamenco, jazz, martial arts, literature, painting and multimedia, while her collaborations have involved artists and practitioners from a wide range of fields. For Madhu, experimentation does not mean leaving tradition behind; it means asking what else can be built from it.

In conversation with Madhu Natraj

Your mother was a dancer. Did you become a dancer because you were influenced by her, or did you want to do something else?

Dance, for me, is home. When I was born, I think the rhythms and dance were pulsating through my mother's body and therefore mine. As a little girl, I was very fond of dancing. But I was also very independent-minded.

I'm an only child. By the time I was about 14 or 15, I had decided that I didn't want to dance because everybody who came home or spoke to me would say, "You're going to be a dancer." I became very adamant that I didn't want to do this because I wanted to chart my own territory and my own course. Both my parents were artists, but they never forced me. I decided in school that I would do a degree in commerce. I was actually all set to join management courses. I was very clear in my head that I would support dance in India. I would say, "I will sponsor dance," rather than become a dancer myself.

Then I had a life-altering experience that brought me back to dance.

What happened?

It was the American Dance Festival, which came to India for the first and last time. I was about 19. I joined an improvisation class and a technique class. One of the teachers was Sarah Pearson. She asked us, "With this one finger, can you create 10 or 15 movements?" You start doing permutations and combinations and realise how many possibilities there are.

Then she said, "With just three joints in your body, if you could create 10 or 15 movements, can you imagine all the different joints in your body and combinations of those? Will you ever be short of creating movement?"

For me, it was like a light went on in my head. I thought, I'm being so adamant about leaving behind something that I really love. I love dance. Then I took it a step further: are you not just short of creating movement? Are you short of creating your life? You are the choreographer of your life.

I remember calling my mother. I was crying and said, "Can I do choreography?" She said, "Why?" I said, "I just feel like this is what I want to do."

She told me, "Only if you are ready to choose creative satisfaction over monetary benefits do you become a dancer. Otherwise, don't. All your friends are going to be CFOs, CEOs, all of that."

And I was ready. That's how I came back to dance.

What was your experience of studying contemporary dance in New York?

On a tour of the US, I stayed back and studied at various studios in New York. It was a very different ecosystem. If you wanted to watch a show, you would skip lunch so you could buy a ticket. It was very enriching. I got to see a lot and try a lot. I eventually got an offer for a scholarship to stay on for five years.

But I suddenly woke up one day and realised that I missed both the fragrance and the stench of India. I felt that I wanted to talk about contemporary topics, the rising artistic ethos, the imagery that India provides you, and the hundreds of dance and movement disciplines that are here. You're surrounded by sources of inspiration.

So I came back. Everyone was asking, "Are you sure? Why are you coming back?"

It was a longer process of trial and error to create your own vocabulary, of course influenced by everything you had learned. I came back with the feeling that I wanted to create an Indian contemporary dance, not an American contemporary dance.

So I revisited all our movement disciplines—many martial arts, yoga, Kathak—and created work with the STEM Dance Company.

You were initially criticised for bringing contemporary ideas into Kathak. How did you respond to that?

When I started my contemporary dance company, I was actually ostracised by most of the purists. They would say, "Why is Dr. Maya Rao's daughter, who's a good Kathak dancer, standing on her head and talking about depression or current issues or sexuality?"

But it was the Bangalore audience that gave me courage. I remember we did a preview show at the Alliance Française with very little money, and it was sold out. Then, as a 33-year-old, I had the courage to book Chowdiah Memorial Hall for two nights, and those shows sold out too.

People in Bangalore are so open to both traditional and modern. Look at Malleswaram. In the mornings, you have a lovely temple concert. You can go on walks. In the evening, you can be at a restaurant listening to Latin music or jazz, or go to a pub.

Dance is a reflection of that. It has to reflect our lives.

You've also taken dance into public spaces. Why is that important to you?

I love doing that. A dancer has to reclaim space in the public domain.

The particular work you're talking about happened in 2011. We were Bangalore's first flash mob. It was part of a festival called Number Dance. The idea was to create a festival where we went to our audiences rather than always expecting audiences to come to us. In four days of the festival, we had around 13,000 people watching.

Apart from one performance at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, everything else was in parks, palaces and public spaces. We had performances at UB City on the escalators, leading audiences towards the theatre.

We've also done a lot of site-specific work. In one piece, we performed in the middle of a water body at the NGMA. It was called Kalpavriksha. We used only the outdoor spaces and two trees, and the audience was watching as the dancers entered the water body and danced.

It created a fluidity between the architecture, nature and dance. I love that kind of symbiotic relationship with architecture, nature and movement.

When you're running so many things, doesn't your artistic work get pushed to the sidelines?

You're so right when you ask that question. A lot of people say to artists, "At least you're doing what you love doing."

And I say, to do what we love doing, we sometimes have only one hour in a day.

The rest of the time, you're sitting in the office thinking about marketing, fundraising, planning. The actual time you get to go out there and dance is very, very little. It is stressful.

In our country we don't have a strong concept of artist management, entrepreneurs or fundraisers. We're doing everything ourselves. You're learning theatre, you're learning everything. That's the challenge, but that's the life we chose.

What's even more stressful is performance stress. Nobody cares when you go on stage. The equation is that you have to be brilliant. That's why people watch you.

Nobody cares if you have a headache, somebody passed away, nothing. You have to constantly be brilliant.

What was it like having your mother as your dance teacher?

I think I was a very difficult student. Because we take our loved ones for granted.

But for me, my mother was more than just a teacher. She was my guru as well as my mother. I always say that I learned more through osmosis than through traditional training methodologies from her because she was such an open-minded person. We never had a generation gap.

Till today I miss her because I can't find that one person who has all these three portfolios at the same time. After every performance, just talking about such a wide spectrum of things—I think I'm very lucky that I was born to her.

Would you like dance to be approached differently, beyond training professional dancers?

That's become such an important part of my life right now. I've been doing workshops called Moving in the Moment and The Goddess Dances. Dance offers you an opportunity to be fearless.

When you dance, that moment is a moment of fearlessness because nothing else matters. You are one with space and time. You're not thinking about what you did wrong or what is going to go wrong in the future. You're in the present moment.

I believe everyone can dance.

We use it as a tool for creativity. We do workshops on creativity, healing, transformation and design. Honestly, as I'm getting older, I enjoy interacting with people who are new converts—people who say, "I'm going to join a dance class"—rather than only working with established performers.

And when our students come, I tell parents that if there are 100 students here, maybe two will become dancers. But the other 98 will buy tickets to watch shows. They might, as CEOs, sponsor arts activities.

That's your role in putting a child into a dance or music class: appreciation of the arts. It becomes part of your cultural DNA. You don't have to become a dancer, but you support the system that looks after artists.