Sharmila Rao

My name is Sharmila Rao and I'm a dancer based in Switzerland. I’ve been on stage since I was 12 and I’ve been giving dance lessons since I was 18 years old. Because of my origin and growing up in two different cultures, I feel a special connection to those young people who have similar experiences today as I did when I was young. I know how they look for their identity in their mutli-cultural environment, how they try to bring tradition and modernity together. Teaching Bharata Natyam to these young people, with fresh ideas and without reducing its quality, that’s my passion.
Apart from my dance education, I studied indology and pedagogy. I owe a lot of knowledge to my studies, to my experience as a dancer, as a mother and to my doctoral thesis. I see myself in the tradition of the devadasis who shaped this dance. I learned from the Gurus who reformed this dance. And I belong to a generation that implements new ideas in order to keep this art alive. All of this shapes me as dancer.