Chitra Visweswaran

Chitra Visweswaran is a Bharatnatyam dancer. She learned dance from her mother Rukmini, and later she took training in Western Classical Ballet in London. She trained under T.A Rajalakshmi for 10 years. She received the National Scholarship for advanced study in Bharatanatyam from the government of India. She went for further training under Vazhuvoor Ramaiyya Pillai. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1992, which is one of the top civilian honours given by Government of India.

Visweswar now runs a dance school, the Chidambaram Academy of Performing Arts, in Chennai, India. Oct 2001

Deeply entrenched in the old Tanjore tradition of Bharathanatyam, Chitra Visweswaran’s association with dance began at a very early age. Her first Guru, at the age of three, was actually her mother, Smt. Rukmini Padmanabhan, who was an excellent dancer trained in contemporary Indian dance and Bharatanatyam but never took it up as a profession. Chitra owes her artistic and creative vision to her mother and intellectual quest to her father, Sri. N. Padmanabhan, an engineer with the Indian Railways. After initiation into dance by her mother, Chitra undertook training in Western Classical Ballet in London where her father was Railway Adviser at the Indian High Commission. This was followed by training in Manipuri and Kathak in Calcutta. At the age of ten, she went under the tutelage of one of the best devadasis of Tiruvidaimardur, Smt.T.A Rajalakshmi, who was settled in Calcutta and under whom she trained for nearly 10 years. Her Arangetram (first maiden performance) took place within ten months, an astonishingly short period to achieve this level of proficiency.