Australia Dancing - Menon, Padma (1966

Menon, Padma (1966 - )

Serras, George: Portrait of Padma Menon, c. 1995

Born in Kerala State, India, Padma Menon trained initially in the Bharatha Natyam style in Hyderabad in 1973. The next year she began training in Kuchipudi and in 1975 gave her graduation recital (Arangetram) in both styles. In 1976 she moved to Madras to work with Vempati Chinna Satyam in the Kuchipudi style and became a member of his dance company, which was attached to the Kuchipudi Art Academy in Madras. In India Menon performed extensively with this company and also gave solo performances across the country.

Menon moved to Australia in 1987 and established herself in Canberra in 1988. She began her Australian career giving solo performances of Kuchipudi, the first of which was Kuchipudi at the National Gallery of Australia in 1989. By 1993 she had established her Kailash Dance Company. It was renamed Padma Menon Dance Theatre in 1996 and Menon, with a philosophy that there is always a dynamic within cultures to change, worked to develop a context in which Kuchipudi could live and grow in Australia. She employed Anglo-Australians as well as Indian-Australians in her company and toured twice to India with her cross-cultural works. In 1996 she collaborated with Meryl Tankard to create Rasa, which used dancers from both Meryl Tankard Australian Dance Theatre and her own Padma Menon Dance Theatre. While in Canberra Menon also established a school of Indian Dance, which became Kailash Dance in 1991 and which reopened in Sydney in 1998 as Mudra Dance.

Menon left Canberra in 1998. She studied postmodern techniques in Sydney with Russell Dumas and theatre directing and Butoh with Nigel Kellaway. Menon continued her work as a dancer and teacher for several years in the Netherlands where she also undertook postgraduate studies in choreography. She then lived for a time in India.

In 2008 Menon returned to Canberra, establishing the Mudra Centre for Dance.

Bibliography:

Edited extracts from Menon's oral history interviews for the National Library, and a list of her Australian choreography to 1996, have been published as 'Dance Reborn' in Michelle Potter, A Passion for Dance (Canberrra: National Library of Australia, 1997), pp. 35-47.

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Internet - Google
Libraries - Libraries Australia
Collection - OzLife
Articles - New York Public Library Dance Collection
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