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 athna
Kumar is an internationally renowned danseuse, teacher and choreographer,
and the Founder-Director of the
Anjali
Center for Performing Arts, the first Indian dance school
in Texas, established in 1975, and one of the first in the US.
An exponent of two major styles of Indian classical dance, Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi, Rathna has trained under the best gurus in the field – Kalaimamani K.J. Sarasa and Padma Vibhushan Dr. Vempati Chinna Satyam. She has performed all over India and the US, Canada, Europe, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka, and is a top ranking artist of the national Indian television network, Doordarshan. Rathna has trained over 2000 students from different ethnic backgrounds from all over the US, and has been recognized by many organizations - Young Audiences of Houston, Miller Theater Advisory Board, Texas Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and UNESCO’s International Dance Council – as a true cultural ambassador of Indian performing arts in the US. She is the author of two illustrated books on the fundamental techniques of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi. For the past several years her students have won special recognition and awards from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, which also gave her a Teacher Recognition Certificate in 2000, and the Texas Commission on the Arts awarded a Young Masters Scholarship to an Anjali student in 2002. Rathna’s contributions to dance and to the cultural diversity of Texas have also earned her a Congressional Recognition from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (2000). In 2002 she was nominated to the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame and received a special Certificate of Appreciation from the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. A Magna Cum Laude graduate in English from Stella Maris College, Chennai, India, Rathna was an Assistant Professor of English at Queen Mary’s College before moving to Houston and dedicating herself full time to the teaching and propagating of traditional and authentic Classical and Folk dances of India. |
