Bharatanatyam · Carnatic Music · Mysuru, since 2006
NAMD Nadavidyalaya is an academy of Bharatanatyam and Carnatic classical music in the cultural capital of Karnataka — founded and still taught, every day, by Vidushi Mithra Naveen and Vidwan M. S. Naveen.
The academy
Nadavidyalaya was founded in 2006 with a single, unfashionable conviction: that classical art is transmitted person to person, not in batches. Two decades on, that is still how it works here. Students sit before their guru. Corrections are given by hand, by voice, by example.
What began as a small class in Hebbal now trains dancers and musicians from tiny tots to vidwath candidates, some of them logging in from other continents — and it does so without loosening a single requirement of the tradition.
What we teach
Dance and music are taught here as they were meant to be learnt — together, with the theory that holds them up and the philosophy that gave them a reason to exist.
Complete practical and theoretical training, from the first adavu to a full-length solo margam.
Classical vocal from sarali varise upward, with devotional repertoire and concert practice.
The Carnatic system on the keyboard — gamaka, fingering and accompaniment for the classical stage.
The wider world an artist needs: folk forms, choreography, yoga and the stagecraft of a production.
Original productions
Vidushi Mithra has conceptualised and choreographed more than twenty full-length works — some drawn from the puranas, others written for international conferences on climate, sustainability and women's empowerment. Vidwan Naveen has composed and sung for them all.
The other half of the house
Theme-based vocal concerts, woven together with narration — conceived and directed by Vidwan M. S. Naveen for the academy's stage.
Music here is not accompaniment to the dancing. It is the other discipline taught in this house, with its own repertoire, its own examinations and its own stage.
Naveen holds the Vidwath in Carnatic classical vocal and is a graded artist of All India Radio. He has composed for and given voice to more than twenty dance dramas and over thirty arangetrams of Nadavidyalaya alone — which is why every production on this page is as much a music work as a dance one.
Every year, without fail
Our annual festival of music and dance, where every student performs — the four-year-old in her first jathi and the vidwath candidate closing the evening, on the same stage.
The youngest dancers. A first stage, a first audience, a first taste of what discipline buys you.
The youngest musicians — tiny tots of Carnatic vocal and keyboard.
Seniors and vidwath students, in full-length music and dance presentations.
Each year we also felicitate senior and veteran artists, so that our students meet the generation that carried this art to them.
“To preserve, perpetuate, pervade and propagate the profound, prestigious art of dance and music — by pursuing it through perennial practice and presentation.”
The archive
On film
Photographs hold a pose; they cannot hold a jathi. Two decades of dance dramas, rangapraveshams and concerts are on our channel.
4:00
The Krishna story told in Bharatanatyam, danced by the senior students to Vidwan Naveen’s composition.
10:14
The most recent debut from the school — enough of the margam to see the training rather than the highlights.
10:07
The music students’ annual concert — the other discipline taught in this house, on its own stage.
From the blog
It is not a graduation and it is not a recital. Here is what the day really means, and the years that go into it.
A production built where the puranas and Ayurveda meet — posture, breath and meditation carried inside Bharatanatyam.
The guru–shishya system is slower, smaller and harder to scale. That is precisely the point.
Admissions
We take students from around age five, with no prior training expected — and we teach adults and overseas learners online. The first conversation costs nothing.
