Kiruthika Rathanaswami

Kiruthika Rathanaswami is a Vancouver based bharata natyam dance artist. For the past 26 years, she has been under the mentorship and guidance of Jai Govinda, Artistic Director of Mandala Arts and Culture Society in Vancouver. She completed her bharata natyam arangetram (graduation) at the Jai Govinda Dance Academy in 2004 and since then has been a part of many of Mandala's professional productions and presentations as a soloist, and ensemble. In 2019, she joined Nova Dance as a company dancer and was recently in Nova Bhattacharaya’s new work Svāhā that premiered in September 2022 in Toronto. Kiruthika has performed in Canada and the United States at notable festivals such as Canada Dance Festival, Gait to the Spirit Festival, Horizon Series, Feats Festival, HH11 Dance Festival, Nextfest, Baltimore Dance Invitational, New Works Dance All Sorts, Discover Dance Noon Series, Solo: A Festival of Dance and Expanse Festival. She was the lead dancer in the documentary film "The Great Night of Shiva" (2011) which was broadcast nationally on Vision TV, Canada. Kiruthika is the recipient of 2010 Shastri India Studies Arts Fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, the 2012 City of Vancouver "The Mayor's Arts Award" for emerging artist in Dance and the 2016 Dancing Damsel Women Achiever Award for the Performing Arts. Kiruthika is currently working on new repertoire with choreographer Jai Govinda exploring how her many years of solo practice and performance, are translated on two dancing bodies. She is curious to see how the physical space, energy, movement patterns and emotions emerge within and between two dancers.