Kathak – twirling into the Malaysian dance ecosystem

When I left for the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2016, kathak (one of the 8 classical dance forms of India) was almost unheard of in Malaysia. However, the Singapore Arts Festival had presented the renowned exponent Akram Khan in his collaborations, Sacred Monsters (with ballerina Sylvie Guillem) and Torobaka (with Spanish flamenco dancer Israel Galvan) while the George Town Festival had curated Vertical Road in 2011. Thus, it came as a surprise, when fast forward to between 30 July and 16 August 2026, there were 3 kathak productions staged in the Klang Valley! Karthik Shetty and Kim Khoo presented theirs in the traditional format, while Arunagiri Szeyuan Lam explored contemporary themes rooted in kathak vocabulary.  

Two senior artists, Umesh Shetty and Geetha Sankaran-Lam have played a role, albeit to different intensities, in encouraging this phenomenon. They are contemporaries in Malaysian dance, having performed together in multiple productions and their lives overlapped for a period of time at The Temple of Fine Arts (TFA) Malaysia which is where the Malaysian story of kathak begins.

Umesh grew up there and trained with his father, the late Master Gopal Shetty who was a great advocate for multi-genre training and exploration. Then in 1992, he was sent by TFA’s founder Swami Shantanand Saraswati, familiarly known as Swamiji, to study kathak for 3 months in Pune, India with Pandita Rohini Bhate. In this time, he met Pandit Birju Maharaj and his disciple Vidushi Saswati Sen who subsequently visited and taught at TFA where a kathak department was established. They then deputized Kolkata-based Shrimathi Paramita Maitra for greater regularity.

A new journey of kathak began for dancers Manjula Radhakrishnan, Nadina Krishnan, Dhanya Thurairajah, Sri Vidya Nagendram, and a younger generation that included Shonabushani Velusamy, Rohini and Karthik Shetty as well as Kim Khoo, from ASWARA where Umesh is a full-time lecturer. Besides weekly lessons, these dancers attended masterclasses in Kolkata, New Delhi, Perth and Kuala Lumpur. Umesh is a choreographer who enjoys combining dance languages and explored contemporary dance and kathak to create a short work called SUM. In 2024, he produced Malaysia’s first full-length kathak production Ritu Mahyafil choreographed by Paramita. This took place alongside the Manch Pravesh or solo debuts for Manjula, Dhanya, Nadina, Sri Vidya, Rohini, Shonabushani (prepared by Nadina) and most recently, Karthik and Kim (30 July to 2 August 2026). Umesh billed his productions as Sadhana, the grace through kathak while Shonabushani’s production was entitled Anvesana – a journey of a thousand steps. For their respective solos, Rohini won the kakiseni Boh Cameronian Award 2023 for Best Featured Lead Performer while Shonabushani won the same award in 2026. They displayed their prowess in recitation of the bols (syllables), complex calculations of taal (rhythmic cycles up to teen taal 16 beats), mastery of tatkar (footwork), technique of arms, chakkar (spins), turns and story-telling. Inspired by this virtuosic dancing, TFA has a kathak enrolment of 100 students today. 

Meanwhile Geetha was a protégé of bharatanatyam guru Natyakalarani V. Krishna Kumari before becoming the first muse of Padmashri Datuk Ramli Ibrahim upon his return to Malaysia in 1981, and Sutra Dance Theatre’s odissi work. After years at Sutra, where she partnered Ramli in all his major works, she joined TFA. Here, she headed the odissi department and was instrumental in all their productions. Her husband, Lam Ghooi Ket was a drama teacher at TFA and thus, their 3 children were naturally assimilated into the arts and teachings of their parents as well as Swamiji. The eldest son Hariram Tingyuan Lam completed his dance and violin arangetram, and danced professionally in Mavin Khoo’s I am Ravana for the Darbar Festival in London in 2019. He is also an ASWARA music graduate and studied Carnatic violin with maestros in India. He has chosen to focus his career on music and is now a virtuoso violinist and composer. The younger two children, Arunagiri and Sangametra have trained in multiple genres of dance and first encountered kathak at the age of 12, attending the inaugural workshop in 2009 by the Indian masters at TFA. When Geethashankarandance (GSD) was established in 2011, the children joined her, and community of kathak students began to grow under the mentorship of Shrimathi Nayanika Ghosh Choudhury from Calcutta who was contracted at GSD. She too, was a disciple of Pandit Birju Maharaj. Unfortunately, Nayanika had to return to India in 2018 for personal reasons leaving Arunagiri and Sangametra to continue their practice and take over the reins of the classes. In 2025, GSD participated in the TFA kathak intensive with Paramita while in 2026, Dhanya and Nadina conducted workshops for 25 GSD students. These experiences led Arunagiri to create Feather & Flute – a fickle heart, a tune left behind, which was staged at GSD Performing Arts Studio on 15 and 16 August 2026. He drew inspiration from part of the story of Radha and Krishna, the Gita Govindam, written by poet saint Jayadeva. He explored the notion that instead of being appeased, Radha walks away from Krishna for good, reinventing Krishna as an ordinary man with no divine powers and questioned what he would do in the face of rejection. This intimate but nonetheless ambitious project was also intended to help Arunagiri learn the ropes of production and management.  

Geetha refers to herself as “the spoke of the wheel of continuity” through the movement that she has trained in or encountered in her journey. She values all that she has learned as does Umesh. Both these senior artists opened doors for the next generation to study, trusting “the love and blessings of the very first guru, Swamiji.” However, they both share the philosophy that their children and other dancers have to chart their own course and pursue their own dreams. It will be very fascinating to see the path of kathak unfold, twirl and spin into the future of Malaysian dance.

Note: The Netaji Subash Chandra Bose Indian Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur presently employs Priyadarshini Sanyal, a kathak teacher, who conducts classes for enthusiasts.