` Dancers Directory at The Horizons - Art, Culture and Lifestyles from India

Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan

A graceful and gifted dancer, Manjula is a classicist in the field of Bharatanatyam. Although she has lived in Switzerland since the age of five, her talent and dedication to this art have earned her a place among the most accomplished dancers of her generation. Her remarkable achievements in this field are due to a combination of unswerving devotion, natural grace and beauty, her faithfulness to the demands of tradition, firm discipline and enquiry.
Manjula's training in Bharatanatyam since the age of four has been under eminent gurus like (late) Smt. Swarna Saraswati and (late) Sri Kuttalam Ganesam Pillai. Manjula's Arangetram took place in Chennai (formerly Madras) in September 1976 at the Bharitya Vidya Bhavan. Since 1981, she has been a student of Padmasri Prof. Sudharani Raghupathy and a senior dancer at Sree Bharathalaya. Manjula opened her own dance school in Geneva, Switzerland in 1992 called Silambam, which is an alliance of Sree Bharathalaya.
Through an impressive career spanning almost twenty-two years, Manjula has more than four hundred unique recitals, lecture demonstrations and workshops to her name. She has performed widely both in India and Switzerland, and also in many countries such as Bahrain, the U.K, France, Germany, Austria, former Republic of Czechoslovakia, former Republic of Yugoslavia, and the United States. She has been a regular participant at the prestigious Music and Dance Festival in Chennai and has danced for almost all the Sabhas there. She has had the honour of performing at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in 1991. Manjula has also been invited to represent India at many international gatherings such as the International Year of the Child in ex-Yugoslavia (1979), India Year in ex-Czechoslovakia (1986), the International Dance Alliance in India (1989) and the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in Switzerland (1995).
Manjula is also the recipient of numerous awards including the "Bharata Kala Bhushana" ( Sree Bharathalaya , July 1995), the "Yuva Kala Bharathi" (Bharat Kalachar, December 1997), the "Nadana Mamani" (Kartik Fine Arts, January 1999) and the prestigious "Kalaimamani" (Tamil Nadu State award, August 1999).
A unique feature of Manjula's dance is that all the benefits of her dance career have been offered to charity. She has helped many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other trusts in projects destined to help build schools, temples, hospitals and providing medical and financial aid to the destitute. Among her many contributions are the building of hot water facilities in a home for mentally handicapped children in Hyderabad, the laying of the foundations of a temple in New Delhi, a day care centre for children in Bengal, an irrigation project in Bihar and a plan for providing free meals to the destitute in Kerala. The benefits of Manjula's school is used to help orphaned and handicapped children in India.

Manjula has also received training in the Martha Graham style of modern dance, Carnatic vocal music, comparative religion and Indian philosophy. She hold a B.Sc. in Physics from Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A. and Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of York, U.K. She is the scientific director in a biotechnology company in Geneva where she is married and settled with two children.

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