Savitha Sastry

Savitha Subramaniam was born in Hyderabad, and later lived in Mumbai before her family relocated to their home town of Chennai. She started her training in Bharatanatyam under the tutelage of Guru Mahalingam Pillai at the Sri Rajarajeswari Bharatha Natya Kala Mandir in Mumbai, and later with Adyar K Lakshman and the Dhananjayans in Chennai. In 1986, she featured as the lead dancer in the Tamil film Ananda Tandavam, a production of her Guru Adyar K Lakshman. Through the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of the millennium, Savitha had performed mostly to traditional repertoires of Bharatanatyam. She produced and choreographed a few full length presentations such as 'Krishna: The Supreme Mystic' and 'Purushartha' during this phase. She is credited to have a high degree of technical proficiency to her kinetics of the dance form in being able to deliver it with grace and technique demanded of Bharatanatyam performers. By 2009, Savitha departed from performing traditional margams (the traditional order in which classical dance is performed), and started her work on theme based productions. Savitha is noted for the use of contemporary and original story lines in her performances and her portrayal of multiple characters as a solo performer in them, which is a marked departure from the traditional Bharatanatyam theme of the nayika (the heroine) pining for love or pieces based on Bhakti (devotion) alone. Savitha is married to AK Srikanth, who is her partner in all her productions and also her classmate from her high school. The couple jointly produce their shows. Since 2018, Savitha and Srikanth have been releasing their productions on free to stream digital platforms to take their work to a world audience. They are also in the process of working on releasing short classical dance videos that narrate a unique story, on the same lines of popular music videos.