We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Radhika Karandikar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Radhika, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I was fortunate to have been born in a family of artists. My mother is a musician, her brother is an architect and percussionist, my grandfather was an actor and narrator in theatre. On my father’s side, my grandmother and her sisters were exceptional singers. Somehow, i believe all this permeated in my life and how!
Mom made me learn multiple arts when i was a child so i could be exposed and eventually make a choice to pursue one or more of them. She enrolled me in fine art class, piano class, music class as well as dance class. Eventually i went ahead with dance. But all the exposure to other allied arts, helped me tremendously. We used to watch a lot of movies, plays, and music concerts. I grew up in this environment and when it was time to choose a career path, they gave me complete freedom to pursue what i wished to. It was a huge step, as i came from a very humble financial background and it was important that i earned well from my work. Being a bright student as a kid, i would have been encouraged to study science or math. But my parents never put that pressure on me. The strong values that they imbibed in me, of discipline, punctuality, honesty, taking to fruition whatever i started, grit, hard work, pushing my own boundaries and focus have been the stronghold for my dancing career. Their constant support, freedom to make my own choices, and an occasional grounding when my feet were little high up in the air have shaped me to a large extent. I wouldn’t have been able to live my dreams if it was not for the relentless support and encouragement by my parents

Radhika, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a Bharatanatyam practitioner, performing has always been my first love and that is how i primarily pursue my art form. I have been fortunate to train under Vaibhav Arekar, a leading and illustrious Bharatanatyam artiste from Mumbai, India. Since 2016 i have been performing as a core dancer in his dance troupe and continue to do so even now when i have settled in California. I love travelling for work, and that’s the second way in which i pursue dance. I also teach kids and adults in Abinaya Arts Academy(founded by Aler Krishnan), San Diego. I also have been associated with other dance schools in USA and have been training students there as well. I believe, that passing on the legacy of this rich art form to the next generation and to imbibe a sense of art appreciation in them is a huge value addition to their lives and i feel extremely fortunate to be shouldering this responsibility.
Apart from teaching, i also conduct dance appreciation workshops and lecture-demonstrations for a variety of audiences (school children, journalism students, other artists, museums, to name a few) .
I also collaborate with artists of other genres and disciplines to create work which is relevant and current, but being true the traditional art form that i pursue. One of my latest works is called ‘Roots and Routes’ which explores the themes of migration and identity. It is also a reflection of my own life as an immigrant artist. My artistic collaborator on this project is Deepta Seshadri (Dallas). I have also experimented with Haiku (Japanese poetry) and dance.
As i do more of it, i realise the vast scope of innovation and exploration that lies in this ancient art form! And i fall in love with it even more!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Art has been a way of human expression since times unknown. We find our way of expression of a huge spectrum of emotions through art. Pursuing art takes us on a high, but watching art too evokes an array of feelings, thought and emotion. It will not be wrong to say that art makes you human, as it makes you feel! Art can also make a huge difference in socio-political scenarios! But no art can be created without labour, hard work, a thinking mind and resources. Art involves as much(or rather more) engagement as a tech job or any other 9-5 job! Constant creation and supplying of work, teaching, facilitating, performing and educating needs a lot of labour and resources. As a society, there are numerous ways in which we can help the creative ecosystem thrive! To name a few :
1. Engaging in watching art.
2. Artists supporting and encouraging artists.
3. The society supporting and encouraging artists.
4. Financial investment in dance programs, scholarships, coaching, presenting, performances etc.
5. Looking at any art form in a holistic way and understanding that art forms are not independent of each other. One may not exclusively engage in only one art form. The deeper you delve the more beauty you will find in this interdependency of arts.
6. Normalising art as one of the extracurricular activities for children.
7. Helping artists by creating more space for art showcases.

8. Normalising ticketed performances of professional dancers.

9. Classical dance is a very precious gift to us Indians. We should do all we can as a society to preserve it and pass it on.

There are many more ways which will help the artist community thrive. Will probably write a separate paper on it some day!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I performed my latest work of Roots and Routes(along with Deepta) last week in San Diego and Houston. The creation process of this work was extremely stressful, even more because it was our first independent work and we were very tensed about how it would be received. We had deadlines to finish and present the work and we believed that there were some things we could have done differently. With butterflies in our stomachs, we presented it in 7 shows. In every one of these shows, we had at least 2 women who came to us very emotional and told us they thought this was their story! We were literally pinching ourselves to get some assurance about the truth of these incidences. That is when we realised that Roots and Routes may not be an artistically brilliant work, but there certainly is something right we are doing that is touching people. This extraordinary power of art to make people feel, to make them human, is what i am ever in awe of. And extremely grateful when that happens through me. It is undoubtedly the most rewarding aspect of being an artist.

Another time is when your very young students develop a liking for dance and start using it to express their joy and happiness! You know you are doing something right when they get joy from dance!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @radhikakarandikar27
• Facebook: Radhika Karandikar
• Youtube: @radhikakarandikar1006

Image Credits

1. Sejas Mistry
2. Eesha Pinglay
3. Omkar Kudale