Indian classical dance, was touring the United States with a solo dancer. He invited Nehru to perform with them on their final night in Washington.Nehru practised for two months to prepare for that moment. When her dance was over, Nehru says her guru told her: “What are you doing with your life? You’re wasting your time. Anyone can do a job, but not everyone can dance like you.”And with that, Nehru, the founder of Kalanidhi Dance — a Bethesda, Maryland-based company celebrating its 25th year — embarked on a journey that nurtured her lifelong passion for dance in a country more attuned to ballet and Bollywood dancing than to Kuchipudi, a form of Indian classical dance.

The company is the subject of a short film, “Why We Dance”, by local filmmaker Ellie Walton. She says she was captivated by the courage it took for Nehru to pursue this art form and “that process of how are you simultaneously losing yourself in the art form you love and how are you building a community through it”. Her film aims to show how even if viewers are unfamiliar with the form, the dance “goes to a deeper core that people can connect to”.Even within the larger classical Indian dance world, Kuchipudi, which hails from southern India, is something of a niche market. But Nehru, 55, has found ways to overcome that, in part through collaborations, with Washington’s Opera Lafayette and with modern dancer Sen Curran, who is chair of the dance department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.A dancer who spent 10 years with Kalanidhi in Bethesda is today one of India’s top Kuchipudi dancers. “I’m known in India today as Amrita Lahiri’s guru,” Nehru says with a laugh.
In fact, that’s not a bad place to be for a woman who wants to help Indian classical dance take off in the United States and make it possible for young dancers to become professional Indian dancers