There are very people in India who would like to pursue dance as a career. Among the very few who choose to have a career in dance especially in classical dance are rare. Among the rarest are the men in dance who choose the profession as a livelihood. But Rajendra Nyathi has chosen classical dance as a career and as a means for livelihood. At the age of five, Rajendra Nyathi started to learn dance from his family members: mother, brother and sister. He was born and raised in Hyderabad. He graduated from Nizam College and obtained a Master’s in Performing Arts from Central University in Hyderabad where in a classic of more than a dozen students he was the only male student.
At the age of fifty-one, Rajendra Nyathi continues to dance, give performances in different parts of India and in other countries. He has a felicity and command in both the classical dance forms of India:
Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi.
Among the Telugu-speaking states of India, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, he is a leading male dancer, and the foremost and most experienced man dancer from Hyderabad and Telangana.
Currently, he lives in Secunderabad and also travels to Hong Kong where he teaches dance: modern and classical. You can listen to the podcast, where the artist talks about art and his life as an artist:
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Rajendra Nyathi has given more than 1000 performances.
Rajendra had made his first overseas visit in 1997 to 12 European countries to narrate the life story of Jesus Christ through Bharata Natyam. Today he counts to have visited more than 60 countries and continues to visit. He believes in sincerity and hard work to be successful as an artist.
He wishes that there is some support from Telangana government for artists like him, and wishes to start a dance academy in Hyderabad and pass the cultural legacy of India in the form of dance to the next generation. His gurus are Swapan Sundari, Chirtra Chandrashekhar and Leila Samson
