Heritage as Performance

UK-based Bharatanatyam dancer Stella Subbiah grew up in an environment steeped in the arts. Her father, Hari Uppal, was the driving force behind Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir in Patna and a respected exponent of Kathakali and Manipuri, which he had studied at Santiniketan.

An alumna of Kalakshetra, Chennai, Stella trained and later worked for over a decade with Rukmini Devi Arundale. Her academic engagements include teaching Indian theatre at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands for a year and a half, followed by over two years in Nigeria. She is proficient in several Indian languages.

Based in the UK, Stella established the All Saints Art Centre in London to train young dancers. In 1994, she founded the Sankalpam Dance Company, which has since built a reputation for presenting Bharatanatyam with a strong grounding in tradition while exploring new choreographic possibilities.

In this interview with Sruti, Stella spoke to us on her her films, Kishna: Knave of Hearts & Indar Sabha.

What inspired you to look make a film on Indar Sabha and Krishna: Knave of Hearts

My approach to these works is shaped by over three decades of exploring Bharatanatyam as a contemporary creative force—an art form capable of holding complexity, history, and lived experience without losing its classical integrity. Much of my choreographic journey has centred on questioning how tradition can speak to the present moment.

In Krishna: Knave of Hearts, this meant shifting the focus from the divine Krishna to the human figure embedded in folk memory—a cowherd, a friend, a mischievous boy. Drawing on literature, Tamil oral traditions, and the melodic simplicity of nottuswarams, I wanted to reclaim the mortal Krishna who is often overshadowed by the iconic deity.

 In Indar Sabha, the visual and theatrical language emerged from the heritage context itself. The syncretic nature of the original 19th-century work, rooted in Indo-Islamic court traditions, offered a rich palette of poetry, music, and movement. Placing Bharatanatyam within historically charged architectural spaces allowed me to create a dialogue between past and present, beauty and power, aesthetics and colonial memory. Theatre and film provided the means to shape a narrative approach that embraces these layers, inviting viewers to encounter familiar stories through a textured, site-responsive lens. Ultimately, it is this intersection of movement, memory, and environment that guides my reinterpretation of cultural narratives for today’s audience.

Through both these films, I wanted to explore how dance can hold space for both memory and imagination, and how movement enables us to revisit what we inherit and reshape it in the present. Indar Sabha and Krishna: Knave of Hearts are, in many ways, my inquiry into how tradition can continue to evolve without losing its essence. Music for the films have been conceptualised and composed by singer Vignesh Ishwar. 

Our films explore familiar stories in new ways. How do you decide what aspects of our traditions to reinterpret or highlight?

Bharatanatyam has traditionally lived in the space of live performance, whether in temples or on stage. Working in film allows me to explore how the form shifts when choreography is created specifically for the camera. The medium changes rhythm, space, and the viewer’s perspective, opening new creative possibilities.

Classical dance on film is often overshadowed by mainstream Bollywood portrayals, so engaging deeply with Bharatanatyam in cinema feels both necessary and meaningful. Film lets me highlight nuances that might be missed on stage, such as gesture, intimacy, environment, and the relationship between dancer and space.

I decide what to reinterpret by focusing on elements that align with the themes of each work including mythology, memory, architecture, or cultural history, and letting the film medium reveal these traditions in ways that feel both contemporary and rooted.

Krishna: Knave of hearts shows a more playful, human side of Krishna. What inspired you to focus on this version of him? 

Building on my earlier work with the children of the UYIR group, whose parents arrived in London as Tamil refugees, I have been promoting Bharatanatyam as an accessible form of artistic expression within a community that has traditionally viewed the dance primarily as a marker of cultural identity. I believe that creating artistically focused films exploring Bharatanatyam can help lower barriers to access, encouraging the wider Tamil community to engage with the form—and with artistic expression more broadly.

Both films connect movement with memory. What role do you feel dance plays in keeping cultural stories alive today?

Bharatanatyam is inherently interdisciplinary, with a continual interplay between the physical body, emotion, and cultural narrative. By giving voice to our stories, histories, memories, and inner experiences, we are not only transmitting the principles of the form in an embodied manner but also inviting awareness of how body sensation, expression, and imagery shape understanding. Through movement, we keep cultural memory alive in ways that are felt, lived, and shared.

What are the challenges you faced during this project and how did you overcome them?

One of the central challenges was learning to think choreographically through the medium of film. With Indar Sabha, the architectural spaces carried their own memories, colonial, political, and aesthetic. Instead of treating these locations as simple backdrops, I needed to listen to them, understand their histories, and choreograph in a way that remained responsive. This demanded research and sensitivity, but it ultimately deepened the dialogue between movement and environment.

 Collaborating with young dancers in both Chennai and London, especially those from the Tamil refugee community who appear in Krishna: Knave of Hearts, brought its own responsibilities. Many of them are still navigating their sense of identity, tradition, and belonging, and several within the Indian context had never experienced my approach to Bharatanatyam, where the focus is on both doing and being. My role was to guide them artistically while ensuring the process felt empowering rather than overwhelming. Patience, open conversations, and creating room for their voices helped us build trust and shape a work that felt genuinely collective.

The practicalities of film production, including scheduling, lighting, sound, weather, and the unpredictability of site-specific shoots, also required constant flexibility. I learned to adjust quickly, rethink scenes on location, and rely on the collaborative instincts of the entire team.

Every challenge became an opportunity to expand my practice. By embracing the uncertainties of filmmaking, I discovered new ways for Bharatanatyam to speak, intimately, visually, and with layered emotional resonance.