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Rukmini Vijayakumar honours tradition while reaching for contemporary cultural consciousness
For the most part, Rukmini Vijayakumar has always been one to move beyond the confines of convention. As a young girl, when she wasn’t tagging along to her mother’s dance classes, she’d be practising handstands or cartwheels around the house.
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SULEIKA MUELLER
Growing up, she trained in ballet and Bharatanatyam simultaneously, and eventually went on to secure a bachelor of fine arts in modern dance and ballet from Boston Conservatory in 2008. Since then, she has performed as a soloist in premier theatres around the world and received special recognition for her role in Pandit Ravi Shankar’s opera Sukanya, produced at The Royal Opera House in London in 2017.
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SULEIKA MUELLER
Rukmini Vijayakumar was lost in a realm between earth and air. Her bare feet beat a noiseless rhythm in the vivid green grass as her arms reached up towards the heavens. At that moment, the sun burst through the trees and shrouded her silhouette, crowning her in a mantle of sunlight. As if on cue, a camera snapped, immortalising Vijayakumar’s communion with the sun.
A new beginning is always infused with "hope". Life is full of moments that we believe to be "beginnings" only because of the presence of hope. The birth of a child, the first day at school, one’s first job, a new house, a new partner, a wedding, reconciliation after an argument and even the end of a relationship is often considered as a "fresh start". A physical symbol of these moments of hope is the flower. It is repeatedly used across cultures in times of reconciliation, celebration, prayer - all moments of ‘hope’. The films attempts to capture the emotion of these beginnings.
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SULEIKA MUELLER
In 2018, she was awarded the Jiri Kylian grant for choreography and was a resident choreographer at Korzo theatre in the Netherlands. She has simultaneously delved into a deep study of Bharatanatyam’s spiritual origins, a journey she recounts in her 2021 book Finding Shiva. Still, even after decades of training rigorously, delivering critically acclaimed performances across the world and amassing a staggering fan base on Instagram, Vijayakumar has preserved a childlike fascination for the art form, and her practice is all the richer for it.
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SULEIKA MUELLER
When Vijayakumar reflects back on the moment in which she raised her arms up to the firmament, allowing sunlight to shroud her silhouette, her voice softens. It is the image that best captures the essence of the entire series, and yet, just like the project itself, came about entirely by happenstance.
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SULEIKA MUELLER
Vijayakumar’s practice has evolved to create a bridge between classical tradition and contemporary consciousness. Over the years, she has developed her own teaching pedagogy, The Raadha Kalpa Method, which came about when she was trying to figure out how to fix her own body, as well as how to find an honest response in the imaginative sphere. Even as she retains the authenticity of 1,000 year old gestures, she infuses them with a raw emotion that is palpable to the uninitiated. “In a lot of the poems, the varnams and the padams, there is this idea of yearning or longing to be united with Krishna, Shiva, or sometimes a goddess,” she says. “That yearning or longing is a parallel for me with a human who is searching for meaning in life or the relevance of one’s existence.”
RUKMINI VIJAYAKUMAR
Artistic Director of her Classical Dance Company, Raadha Kalpa, the Director of her Art Space, LshVa, and the founder of The Raadha Kalpa Method, a pedagogical system for the practice of Bharatanatyam.
Theyyam is a vibrant and colourful form of ritualistic worship that is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of Kerala, India. This living tradition involves elaborate rituals, music, dance, and vibrant costumes that bring to life the divine spirits being invoked.
What if precarity is the condition of our time or, to put it an other way, what if our time is ripe for sensing precarity? What if precarity, indeterminacy, and what we imagine as trivial are the center of the systematicity we seek?
INDIA IN STYLE: 100 DAYS OF ART
India in Style, was created as part of Ayurveda Trails & Journals. During the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025-26, our founder Zuzana Zwiebel introduces one artist, event, or organisation every day, Here are the first 25 days. Let us inspire you!
Can prehistoric artifacts be art? Come see for yourself at Kara in Fort Cochin! Mohamed A’s photographic images of excavations and the excavated - real, yet mysterious and enigmatic - take us on a journey into Kerala’s prehistoric past.
KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE 2025-26
The 6th edition of the KMB 2025 is curated by Nikhil Chopra with HH Art Spaces, an artist led organisation based in Goa. Chopra is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice interweaves performance, drawing, photography, sculpture, and installation.
Ganesha is not for the artist a religious figure, it is a very personal almost incomprehensible connection, which has become a relationship that he commonly describes as being a mirror to the soul. Ganesha, in this case, is about portraying the image of a formless energy.
Chilean poet and featuring artist at the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2016 on the possibility of an artistic response to the human crises of our time, including the refugee crisis surrounding the conflict in Syria. The sea, which became a grave for hundreds of people, including children.
INTERNATIONAL SPICE ROUTE CONFERENCE 2026
Welcome to the First Edition of the Spice Routes Conference organized by the Muziris Heritage Project, Government of Kerala January 6-8, 2026 in Bolgatty Palace, Kochi. Step into a world where history, culture, and global connections converge.
Theyyam is a vibrant and colourful form of ritualistic worship that is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of Kerala, India. This living tradition involves elaborate rituals, music, dance, and vibrant costumes that bring to life the divine spirits being invoked.
A new beginning is always infused with hope. Life is full of moments that we believe to be beginnings only because of the presence of hope. A physical symbol of these moments of hope is the flower. The films attempts to capture the emotion of these beginnings.
Dravidian Catharsis is the fruit of this deep immersion in the culture, the theatre, the traditions, and the soul of this mythological universe of the Tamil people. The powerful presences of spirits and living gods are embodied under masks.
Legend says that somewhere deep in the forest of the Himalayas is a strange bird that lays psychedelic eggs. Eating them will give you highly vivid hallucinations. The indigenous shamans believe that these visions are from your past life.
Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away this year on 28th March leaving behind a legacy of innumerable musical compositions that'll keep him alive in countless hearts across the world. However, I'll always be haunted by the fact that I couldn't let him know that I'm still alive because of his music along with many more.
Search for the questions to the answers written on the skin...and i asked. am i connected to the deep inside you? with the invisible roots from the layered skin of you? all the energy you transfer to the heart of your thoughts?i asked again am i still connected?
01: Ayurveda in Travancore Kingdom
If you expect stories which starts: Once upon a time, there was a princess... stop reading. Her Highness Princess Gouri Parvathi Bayi of the Travancore Royal Family will introduce us very modern and open minded view on today's Kerala society and ayurveda.
Stories of communities about origin, spread and apocalypse being presented through episodic memories, narrative and visual texts, travel writings, murals, divine objects, church paintings, and songs provide a dense and myriad repository of historical and artistic imagination.
