Madhuri Upadhya – Nritarutya

Madhuri is an accomplished choreographer, dancer and entrepreneur, who is at the helm of steering Nritarutya as its Associate Director. She is also the force behind Nritarutya’s expanding artist development and education wing.

Her work explores themes inspired by the complexities of Indian music, crafts and architecture, and is seeped deep in research. Her expression of work is best described as delving into different visual worlds and bringing it on stage. Having won numerous awards, her recent work includes being the Associate Choreographer of ‘Mughal E Azam’, a magnum opus musical theatre.

A fine arts graduate, she dabbles with visual arts and movement. Creating works which reflect her mind of a painter, her biggest challenges and accomplishments lie in her bringing a two-dimensional aspect to dance. She has brought a new wave of expression choreography, and is at the forefront of introducing perceptible elements in movement arts. Her critically acclaimed works like Trishanku, Chittara, Matsyangana, all reflect her exploration of an idea with an aim to capture its essence – as a painter would approach a canvas.

She is also the vision behind Nritarutya’s structured dance education programme giving an able and efficient learning platform to the young dancers.

Madhuri’s relentless pursuit to induct the best talent for our company is the main reason our artist base has grown to 30 professionally trained in-house dancers so far. She auditions, selects and conditions young dancers from all over India, to be a part of Nritarutya and annually provides employment to more than 300 dancers, by commissioning them on project features or working with them on a permanent basis. Her latest initiative towards capacity building of artists is Dance N More – a series of specialised workshops which aim to mobilise the creative minds with a working balance of the traditional and the modern dance methodologies.

Madhuri Upadhya.