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Tutor's Bio
Santha Bhaskar
Artistic Director & Resident Choreographer
Santha Bhaskar is a graduate of the Chempakassary Arya Kala Nilayam in Kerala and a student of the late Ramunni Panicker, Guru Kunchu Kurup and Kutralam Ganesam Pillai. Under these masters, she mastered Mohini Attam, Bharatanatyam and Kathakali. She also holds a diploma in Karnatic music from the Tamil Nadu Government.
Joining her husband in Singapore in 1956, she taught and choreographed at Bhaskar's Academy of Dance, now known as Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society. Santha is well known for her contributions to the development of Indian classical dance in Singapore and Malaysia. She has also studied traditional Chinese and Malay dance in Singapore, Thai dance and music at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and Odissi dance at the Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata. Besides dance and music she has had training in theatre studies.
For her outstanding services and contributions to the arts scene in Singapore, she was awarded the prestigious Cultural Medallion in 1990.
In addition, the "Natya Kalanidhi" award by the great poet Sudhananda Bharathiyar in 1957, "Kala Rani" award by Indian Film Arts Society and "Kala Ratnam" award by the Singapore Fine Arts Society, are a few of the other awards she has received for her brilliant work in this field. She has conducted more than 100 Arangetrams for which she has composed many 'Margams', specially designed for each individual dancer. She also has choreographed more than 50 programmes for television.
Her unique interpretation of traditional and modern dance idioms has resulted in many of her dance productions like Ramayana and Manohra which have made her a well-known choreographer in this region. The dance drama Manohra which fused Indian and Thai dance gained attention at the 1996 Singapore Arts Festival, while her interpretations of the Ramayana epic won acclaim at the Angkor Wat International Ramayana Festival in 1995 and at the Ramayana Festival in India in 1999. Her prolific output also includes the ongoing Aum Muruga series and the more recent Rasa & Dhwani at the Esplanade in 2003, where she set verses by Singaporean poets in all four official languages to dance.
Presently, she teaches at the Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society and at the Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore. She is also resident choreographer at the Centre, for which she has choreographed its Sanskrit drama in English, Shakuntala of the Mahabharata in 2002. She has also written many articles on dance for seminars and performing arts magazines.
