Kathak in motion
lasya · graceful dance / laya · rhythm
Where grace finds rhythm, and every gesture becomes a story.
Lasyalaya is the home of a Kathak dancer who treats this classical form as practice, not performance — a practice of rhythm, grace, and quiet discipline. Every riyaz session is its own adventure: some days pure joy, others pure frustration. Some days the body and mind have limits; other days they just flow. All of it, one long balancing act between perfection, acceptance, and letting go.
Lasyalaya — lasya (graceful dance) + laya (rhythm) — is where these experiences live: riyaaz, realizations, practice notes, and musings from my journey.
a Kathak dancer, and this is Lasyalaya, my little corner of the internet, where lasya (graceful dance) meets laya (rhythm).
I'm a senior Kathak practitioner at the Tarangini school of Kathak dance, under the tutelage of Smt. Anuradha Nag, the school's artistic director — student, troupe member, production dancer, and teacher, all in one. My journey began at Nrityabharati in Pune, with Harmonium and Tabla lessons running alongside. Cities changed; Kathak didn't. It has been my constant, no matter where life took me.
I love the journey of pursuing an art form — the storytelling, the abhinaya, the crisp tatkar. The destination is important, yet it's the journey I hold closest. The moment the ghungroos lock into the beat, the world fades away, and the dance teaches me something new.
We all know dancers are athletes — but dancing is not a sport. Over the years, I've learnt to listen to my body as closely as I listen to the tabla. However safe the form, overuse injuries are a given, so as I demand more of my body, I've grown wiser about rest and nutrition.
Kathak isn't a hobby, it's a personality trait.
Sometimes you enjoy the process of making something so much that you never get to the finish line. At some point you have to stop trying and start doing it. If something never gets to the doing point, it stays a beautiful idea and nothing more.
A performance that falls short is still a teacher. The lesson is not in finding fault; it is in letting the disappointment pass, examining what went wrong without excuses, and carrying that knowledge back into practice. That is how growth works — on stage and off it.
Teaching a kids' class the other day, I noticed what positive feedback does — confidence rises, faces light up, they know they're doing something right. Shouldn't the same apply to adults? Why do we hold back with grown-up students? A student is a student, whatever the age. It's human nature to need to hear that the thing you're learning, the thing you love, you're good at. Adults may not ask for it, but watch closely — they glow just the same.
After a performance, a junior troupe member complimented a senior on her dancing. "That was good? It was so bad!" the senior replied. I saw the hurt on the junior's face — her gift, rejected. It made me think: as dancers, we should accept a compliment graciously, no matter how badly we feel we performed. To accept it is to respect the giver. Next time someone compliments us on our dancing, graciously accept it.
Over the summer I taught the sweetest class of Gen Alphas. They taught me something, too: learning is pure fun when judgement and comparison don't exist. The world teaches us both, and then we spend the rest of our lives learning to turn them off. Being unaware of them entirely — that's bliss.
A workshop is never for collecting more material. It is a time to watch the legends up close — to spend time in their presence.
Fortune gave me a few precious hours learning from Pt. Birju Maharaj, Smt. Kumudini Lakhia, Saswati Sen, and Durga Arya — hours I hold with gratitude.