Anjali Center For Performing Arts

Rathna Kumar started her dance journey as a 4 year old, and her professional career as a performing solo dancer began at the young age of 9. She has performed all over the world at prestigious events and festivals, and venues such as the Téatre des Champs Elysée, Paris, France. She settled down in Houston, Texas, in 1975, where she established Texas’ first Indian dance institute, ANJALI Center for Performing Arts, also one of the first in North America. Rathna is a reputed performer, choreographer, teacher, arts educator, and cultural ambassador. She is also a scholar, linguist, singer, public speaker and a published author, and has specialized in two classical dance forms, Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, which she studied under renowned Gurus K.J. Sarasa and Vempati Chinna Satyam respectively. She has also studied Abhinaya under Mylapore Gowri Ammal and Kalanidhi Narayanan.Immensely successful in the US as an artist, Rathna continues to perform and receive numerous awards in India as well, in recognition of her ongoing efforts to promote Indian classical dance in her current homeland, USA. Most significantly, the Government of India conferred upon her, one of only two Indian Americans in history, the most prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Excellence in Performing Arts (Kuchipudi Dance), for her prodigious contribution to the preservation, promotion and propagation of the traditional arts of India. She is a recipient of several Individual Artist Grants for Choreography from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, and a Groundwork Grant from Dance Source Houston. In 2022 the Young Audiences of Houston, in recognition of her long service to the organization, gave her an arts-in-Education Tenured Teaching Artist Award, and in January 2023 she was named Artist of the Year 2023 by Dance Source Houston.