Mrinalini Sarabhai
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Mrinalini Sarabhai (born 1918) is a celebrated classical dancer of India. She is the founder director of the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, an institute for imparting training in dance, drama, music and puppetry, in the city of Ahmedabad. She has received many distinguished awards and citations in recognitions of her contribution to art.
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[edit] Biogarphy
[edit] Early life and Education
Mrinalini was born into a Nair family near Thrissur. She was educated at Shantiniketan under the guidance of Rabindranath Tagore where she realized her true calling. She then went for a short time to the United States where she enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On returning to India, she began her training in Bharatnatyam and Kathakali, Indian classical danceforms. Her guru was Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai.
[edit] Marriage and the following years
She got married in 1942 to the Indian physicist Vikram Sarabhai who is considered to be the Father of the Indian space program. She has a son, Karthikeya and a daughter Mallika who went on to attain fame in dance. She founded Darpana in Ahmedabad in 1948. In 1949, she performed at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris where she received a lot of critical acclaim.
[edit] Other areas of contribution
Besides choreographing more than three hundred dance dramas. She has also written many novels, poetry, plays and stories for children. She was chairperson of the Gujarat State Handicrafts and Handloom Development Corporation Ltd. She is also one of the trustees of the Sarvodaya International Trust, an organization for promotion of Gandhian ideals, and is also the chairperson of the Nehru Foundation for Development (NFD).
Her autobiography is titled Mrinalini Sarabhai: The Voice of the Heart.
[edit] Family
Her father was a renowned barrister at the Madras High Court and mother Ammu Swaminathan was a remarkable woman of her times. Her elder sister Capt. Dr. Lakshmi Sehgal was the commander-in-chief of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's 'Rani of Jhansi Regiment' of the Indian National Army Azad Hind Fauz.
[edit] Awards
She has been awarded by the Indian government with the national civilian awards Padma Bhushan in 1992 and the Padma Shri in 1965. She was honoured with the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa (LittD) by the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK in 1997. She was also the first Indian to receive the medal and Diploma of the French Archives Internationales de la Danse. She was nominated to the Executive Committee of the International Dance Council, Paris in 1990 and awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, New Delhi in 1994. She was presented with a gold medal by the Mexican Government for her choreography for the Ballet Folklorico of Mexico.
[edit] See also
- Mallika Sarabhai
- Vikram Sarabhai
- List of citizens of Ahmedabad awarded with national civilian honours
- Indian women in dance
