Ratnam's CV boasts over 1000 performances in 15 countries in course of a career spanning over three decades -– and she has shown no inclination to hang up her gunghroos.
"I am in dance because this is my own way of connecting with myself and the world," Ratnam says.
She is rooted heavily in the orthodoxy of Bharata Natyam and Kathakali, yet she constantly innovates, experimenting with form and style in ways that purists consider borderline sacrilege.
Ratnam has a pithy explanation, that at a broader level defines what she brings to the art. "I consider myself a contemporary classicist," she says.
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