Padmini Chettur
Padmini Chettur began her contemporary dance career in 1990 with Chandralekha, the radical modernist, Bharatanatyam choreographer whose oeuvre deconstructed the form of Bharatanatyam. Breaking away from Chandralekha’s work in 2001, Padmini’s practice shifted the choreographic tradition to a minimal language that has visually translated concepts of time and space as they relate to contemporary experience. Deriving vocabularies from phenomenology, cultural studies, insect movements, astronomy, physiotherapy, and sport, she has created a taut visual language that exits the narrow bounds of the stage. During her career as a choreographer, spanning two decades, she collaborated with sculptors, light artists, filmmakers, and sound-artists. Her approach to movement research is scientific in rigueur. From Wings and Masks (1993) throughout her oeuvre, Padmini has been concerned with refining form through experiments with the body.