Santha Bhaskar is a graduate of the Chempakassary Arya Kala Nilayam in Kerala and a student of the late Ramunni Panicker, Guru Kunchu Kurup and Kutralam Ganesam Pillai. Under these masters, she mastered Mohini Attam, Bharatanatyam and Kathakali. She also holds a diploma in Karnatic music from the Tamil Nadu Government.

Joining her husband in Singapore in 1956, she taught and choreographed at Bhaskar's Academy of Dance, now known as Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society. Santha is well known for her contributions to the development of Indian classical dance in Singapore and Malaysia. She has also studied traditional Chinese and Malay dance in Singapore, Thai dance and music at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and Odissi dance at the Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata. Besides dance and music she is trained in theatre studies.

For her outstanding services and contributions to the arts scene in Singapore, she was awarded the prestigious Cultural Medallion in 1990.

Anuja Varaprasad has been learning Bharathanatyam from the age of 6 and has been a student of the Singapore Indian Fine Arts Society (SIFAS) since 1994. She completed her Arangetram in 2006 and has participated in numerous dance dramas and solo productions both in India and Singapore. Anuja has danced with NUS Indian Dance for 3 years, participating in Vriksha in 2009, followed by Anweshana III in 2011. In November last year, Anuja successfully conceptualized and staged a thematic dance production titled Svam - My Own, which was a personal and philosophical interpretation of the sacred art form of Bharathanatyam. The production explored intangible concepts and emotions through the tangible yet spiritual art form.

Anuja graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2009 with a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Economics) and is currently employed with the Singapore government. She hopes to pursue a Masters in South Asian studies someday.

Gabriel Palai Anbu
Choreographer

A 2002 graduate from NUS’ Department of Biology, Gabriel has been dancing Bharatnatyam for over 14 years. He is currently working as a Biology teacher in Victoria School.

Meera completed her undergraduate work from NUS in 2006 along with a PhD in the year 2012 from NUS. She is currently a Research Fellow at the National University Hospital working in the area of developing new and effective treatments for tuberculosis. She has been involved with CFA upon entering NUS and it has transformed her life in more ways than one. She practises Bharatnatyam and Odissi – two classical dance forms that have several commonalities yet are so unique. She enjoys her interaction with dance at several levels – as a student, teacher, performer, choreographer, audience and most importantly as a dancer.

Pooja Gopal
Dancer

Pooja Gopal completed her undergraduate studies from NUS in 2011 from the Department of Life Sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD with the Department of Microbiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. She has been dancing for NUS Indian dance for over 5 yrs and has recently started learning Odissi for a year with Raka Maitra.

Jayasri Narayanan
Dancer

A 2011 Life Sciences graduate from NUS’ Faculty of Science, Jayasri has been dancing for 13 years and over six years with NUS Indian Dance. She is currently a Project Manager in National Parks Board.

Apurva Parthasarathi
Dancer

Apurva graduated from the Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, NUS in 2012. She has been an active member of NUS Indian Dance (Bharatnatyam) since her first year in NUS and was instrumental in forming the Bollywood sub group in NUS Indian Dance. She has been learning Bharatnatyam for the past 15 years in Singapore and currently works at an event company, Marcus Evans.

Aparna Nambiar
Dancer

Aparna graduated with an honors degree in Life Sciences from NUS in 2008. Since then she has embarked on a committed career in the arts, as an administrator at the NUS Centre For the Arts, as a scholar on performance and as an Indian dancer. She completed a research project at the Institute of South East Asian Studies Singapore connected to Indian Dance and has a dual Masters degree in International Performance Research and Theatre Studies at the Universities of Warwick and Amsterdam. Her recent work of scholarship consisted of a study connecting performance and identity among the Indian diaspora in Singapore. Aparna has over twenty years of training in Bharatanatyam and has recently taken up the Indian classical dance form, Odissi as well. She is currently working on two dance projects and continues to write on culture and performance. She is a recipient of the Singapore National Arts Council Overseas Scholarship in 2011 and also won the National University of Singapore's Tan Ean Kiam Arts Award (Alumni) in 2012.