Natya Vriksha’s Young Dancers Festival 2026

Young Dancers Festival, organised by renowned dancer Geeta Chandran and team Natya Vriksha is a carefully ideated and carried out annual dance fest. Apart from being a performance platform for promising dancers it is also a curated collection of talks and workshops aimed at offering wider perspectives on dance. Geeta Chandran says that she has always wanted to create a welcoming and conducive space for dancers to interact with one another, share common experiences and also learn from lec dems, workshops, discussions etc., The festival, therefore, has been thoughtfully designed to be a wholesome, collaborative program where every dancer has something to offer and receive, not bound by style (of dance) or seniority. The 19th edition of the festival was held on 25th and 26th April 2026, at India International Center, Delhi. 

The first day opened with a Yangshak Movement Workshop led by Surjit Nongmeikapam. Drawing from Manipuri movement vocabulary and martial arts traditions, the session explored breath, balance, momentum and the spine as the central axis of movement.

The evening featured the Young Dancers Festival (Yuva Nritya Utsav), presenting Bharatanatyam by Karuna Sagari, followed by a Kathak recital by Ameera Patankar.

The second day began with the continuation of the workshop in the morning. Later in the day, Anita Ratnam moderated a panel discussion titled AI & Dance: Challenges and Opportunities, with Madhu Nataraj delivering the keynote address. The discussion examined the evolving intersections between technology, artificial intelligence, virtual environments and movement practices.

The festival concluded with another segment of the Young Dancers Festival, featuring an Odissi performance by Vrinda Chadha and a Kuchipudi recital by Avijit Das.

While I was unable to watch the performances across all the festival days, I did manage to attend the lecture-demonstration and presentation by guru Sucheta Bhide Chapekar.

Sucheta Bhide Chapekar 

Music and dance are inseparable. To be an effective dancer, one has to be deeply involved with music as well. Sucheta Chapekar’s journey as an artist is a testament to this. She began training in dance at the age of five and it became her serious pursuit when she was around ten years of age. While training under Acharya Parvati Kumar, she also learned Carnatic music from Thailambal Krishna. Thereby, she developed a deep understanding of Carnatic music. She was the first dancer to perform a concert entirely based on Sarforji’s compositions from a treatise called ‘Korvayache Bhaavache Jinnas’. It was during this period, she was introduced to Shahaji Raja’s work. She took a special interest in his padas and darus. Travelling from Pune to Tanjavur, she delved deep into researching Shahaji's dance literature called Prabandha. She was guided by eminent scholar, Dr. V. Raghavan. At once, she recognized the novelty these compositions would bring to Bharatanatyam recitals. Her guru(then) K.P.Kittappa Pillai readily agreed to compose music for the 9 padas and darus that she had selected from Shahaji’s compositions. After a decade of unwavering effort, she gave a full recital, solely on Shahaji’s work. While she dazzled audiences across the South, receiving rave reviews for her performances based on Marathi compositions, she perceived a certain lacuna in understanding of Bharatanatyam in the audience of Maharashtra and further North. Listening to Marathi compositions set to tune in Carnatic music was not something they were able to connect with. It occurred to her that lexical familiarity alone would not suffice to connect with the dance form. Thinking out of the box, she came up with NrityaGanga. 

NrityaGanga - A confluence of Bharatanatyam and Hindustani classical music

NrityaGanga was the result of a logically accurate idea to adapt a rooted Southern dance tradition to be more comprehensible and appealing to audiences from a completely different cultural and linguistic context. Sucheta  did this by adapting Bharatanatyam choreography to Hindustani music. Taking up this herculean task, she was clear that she had to preserve the chastity of Bharatanatyam and the blending of Hindustani music and Marathi and Hindi texts should be seamless. After years of dedication and sweat, she formulated NrityaGanga as a new baani of dance. It was widely accepted and received acclaim across the dance community.

Pravaahita - The performance 

Beginning the presentation with a short talk on her early years of training and performance in dance and how she was taught the Panchajathi cycle by K.P.Kittappa Pillai, Sucheta  performed the Panchajathi alarippu with splendid energy and grace. This was followed by a Marathi pada on Lord Shiva in Reetigaula raga. Describing Shiva as the vast, unending expanse and describing the Lord with his family, her granddaughter Sagarika Patwardhan danced to Sucheta’s choreography and interpretation of the pada. Sucheta then spoke about Shahaji Raja’s scholarly compositions. He was the first one to have composed Yakshaganas in Hindi. Taking in elements of Yakshagana and blending them with the prabandha format, he had created a new style suited for dance choreography. 

His daru-s spanned across several themes and the next performance piece was an abhinaya daru, an excerpt from Shahaji’s ‘Vishwateeta Vilasa’. Sucheta had made the abinaya daru into something similar to a varnam. ‘Suna sakhi piyu meru kahaan’ - Vishnu and Brahma have gone in search of Shiva. Vishnu, not having returned in a while and Nayika unable to withstand the separation, talks to her friend about her painful longing and melancholic search. The composition then takes on a different shade. The nayika gets fed up and begins to wonder how such a valiant hero could go missing.

With two different avasta bhedas featuring in the text, the original composition had been set to Adi tala for the first part and the second was set to ata tala. Kittappa Sir had enthusiastically agreed to compose music while Sucheta had to parse the text and split the words appropriately. He had aptly chosen Desya ragas like Behag, Kapi etc to set tune to the composition and finalized the koravais and teermanams, leaving the interpretation and abhinayas to Sucheta. With the prologue being beautifully descriptive, one could only expect the presentation to be superlative and it was so! Describing her pain and confusion, in the first part of the composition, Sucheta's abhinayas of a Virahotkanthita(a distressed heroine) were beautiful and tender. During the second part of the composition, ‘Kithe Gaye’ set to Hindola ragam, she showed the switching moods with sprightly grace. Her posture, stamina, the alacrity with which she performed the jathis and koravais and her emoting to the line ‘Aparadh maine kuch nahin ki ho’ were a masterclass in precision and devotion to dance.

The next abhinaya padam from Soubhadram, Nahin mi bolatha natha was a charming one depicting a nayika’s mock anger. Sagarika, then, danced to a Shiva Stuti in Natabhairavi raga and followed it up with a brisk Tarana. Midway, Sucheta joined her with a radiant smile and dazzling presence, making the light effects on the stage seem redundant! She ended the performance with a 13th Century abhang by Dnyaneshwar - Saguni nirguna, nirguni saguna. The philosophically profound yet abstract composition talks about the dual nature of the divine. How his divine form is a part of his formlessness - just like a tiny drop of water is part of an ocean and the ocean is made of tiny drops of water, after all. Sucheta beautifully interpreted this intangible truth into a visually appealing and intellectually assimilable presentation.

Sucheta’s Pravaahita brought out the essence of Bharatanatyam’s historical and spiritual attributes. The intergenerational dance performance was a demonstration in agility and sagacity that belies age, highlighting the importance of a lifelong love and dedication for dance. In a time when Indian classical dance forms are being viewed merely as performative mediums, veterans like Sucheta Chapekat offer a comprehensive view of our dance forms to the younger generation.

By Shilpa Shankar

(the author is a Carnatic vocalist, writer and a rasika based in Noida)