An Evening with Sreelakshmy Govardhanan
Thursday, October 15 | 7:30PM
Danspace Project and FourOneOne present an evening with Sreelakshmy Govardhanan in performance and conversation with Marina Harss.
To watch Sreelaksmy Govardhanan perform is to experience her complete “surrender, unlearning and absorption” in the controlled abandon of kuchipudi, a classical Indian dance form that traces its origins to the 15th century.
Govardhanan will present a solo performance followed by a conversation with dance critic and writer Marina Harss and the audience.
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Sreelakshmy Govardhanan is a renowned Kuchipudi dancer, choreographer, and researcher from Kerala, India. While deeply rooted in the robust sampradaya of her Guru Pasumarthy Rattaiah Sarma, a doyen of Kuchipudi Yakshagana, Sreelakshmy has evolved as an individualistic and reflective dancing body who envisions her art as a medium to engage with contemporary society.
Her repertoire is a unique yet harmonious amalgam of tradition and innovation—often philosophical, thought-provoking, and rooted in deep aesthetic inquiry. She is widely admired for her grace, intricate footwork, and expressive abhinaya, which come vividly alive in her performances.
Sreelakshmy is the Founder and Artistic Director of Avanthika Space for Dance, a centre dedicated to learning, performance, and research in Indian classical dance.
She has received numerous prestigious honours including the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar from the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi (National Award), Kalashree from the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi (Kerala State Award), Aditya Vikram Birla Kalakiran Puraskar, the Silver Conch Award from Keli, Best Dancer Award from the Madras Music Academy, and the Biennial Endowment Award from Narada Gana Sabha, Chennai, among others.
Sreelakshmy is a graded artiste of Doordarshan and an empanelled artiste in the Established category of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). She is also a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
In addition to her artistic pursuits, Sreelakshmy is a trained professional psychologist. She integrates her understanding of psychology with her practice of dance, using both as tools to nurture artistic sensitivity and support the emotional and creative development of young minds.
Marina Harss is a writer, journalist, and critic based in New York City, writing on all aspects of dance and occasionally on opera. Her features, profiles, reviews and interviews have appeared in: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Ballet Review, Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, Playbill, BAMBill, Dancetabs.com, and the Fjord Review, among others. Her book on the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet, was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux in October 2023.
FourOneOne is a non-profit organization supporting historically aware and rooted performance practices across genres, enabling New York’s many audiences to engage with multiplicity and alternative approaches to time and space.