Kumudini Lakhia

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Kumudini Lakhia (born 1930) is a Kathak dancer and choreographer based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, where she has co-founded (with musician Atul Desai) an institution named Kadamb, a centre for Indian dance and music.

She began her career dancing with Ram Gopal as he toured the West, bringing Indian dance to the eyes of people abroad for the first time, and then became a noted dancer and choreographer in her own right. She learned first from various gurus of Jaipur gharana, and then from the renowned Shambhu Maharaj. She particularly excels in her multi-person choreographies which are renowned for their fresh and innovative use of the performance space while losing none of the pure classicism of the dance form. Some of her most famous choreographies include Dhabkar (Pulse), Yugal (The Duet), and Atah Kim (Where Now?). In each of these, she presented the Kathak dance form in a way that had never been seen before, and which at the time had some purists up in arms. However, these choreographies are now considered classic, and many of the innovations she premiered in them have become so ingrained in Kathak performance that people are unaware that they were once just that: innovations.

She is also guru to many disciples, perhaps most notably Kathak dancers Maulik Shah, Aditi Mangaldas, Parul Shah, Daksha Sheth, Anjali Patil and Ishira Parikh who have both gone on to international fame.

Kumudini Lakhia was awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1987.