As a committed artist-activist, dancer Swaroopa Prameela Unni inevitably brings elements of her advocacy into her performances.
At the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2025 earlier this year, her production Sringaram – Tales of Love incorporated the Supreme Court of India’s landmark 2018 ruling on LGBTQI+ rights, through an unusual but effective choreography.
The ruling, decriminalising an unjust law that went back to colonial times, was met with jubilation across India.
Swaroopa declared it loud and clear in her tales of love: love is love is love.
Perhaps Swaroopa will bring more such contemporary issues when she introduces her show in Sydney later this month – a remarkable production created with sensitivity and honesty, and a good measure of courage.
While mythology, spirituality and traditional narratives continue to be the mainstay in classical dance, topics such as gender identity, climate change, mental health, caste discrimination, and LGBTQI+ rights have begun to creep into choreography.
By blending tradition with modern themes, classical dance transforms into a vibrant medium for contemporary storytelling and activism – engaging new audiences and challenging the notion that it belongs only to the past.
Swaroopa Prameela Unni is an accomplished Bharatnatyam, Mohiniyattam and Kuchipudi dancer. She is also trained in Kathak, and she enjoys performing non-classical dance styles such as Indian folk and Bollywood as well. Clearly, she is deeply passionate about dancing, and her years in India and later in New Zealand where she lived until recently, have been rich with splendid achievements in the field of dance. She moved to Australia last year, making home in Perth. Swaroopa Sringaram Tales of Love
Her fascinating solo show Sringaram – Tales of Love has been staged at various festivals in New Zealand earlier and received critical acclaim.
Shringar Rasa is of course the most celebrated conceptual mood of Indian classical dance, expressing the beauty of love between the lover and the beloved. It conveys a wide range of emotions associated with passionate love, from the joy of union to the sadness of separation or loss. Traditionally, Shringar Rasa has embodied romantic love between Hinduism’s revered divinities, and as such it is looked upon as Bhakti Shringar, which is a special practice of bhakti or devotion to the gods and goddesses portraying the mythological stories of their love lives in Indian art. We are familiar with the tales of godly romance that is often presented in classical dance.
But love is a powerful human emotion after all, and universally regarded as the most important one. And Swaroopa’s Sringaram breaks out from the traditions of earlier times to bring the love stories of mere earthlings into the pristine folds of Bharatnatyam. Through her excellent weave of narration and choreography backed with a charming selection of raga-based Bollywood music and traditional music like javalis and padams, the viewer is transported to a world of passion: boldly and beautifully, from the perspective of earthly females.
It renders the production a gentle, aesthetic, and at the same time powerfully feminist celebration of the sublime human emotion called love.
Yearnings of the nayika, or protagonist, for the touch of a distant lover, the pain on temporary separation from a partner, the deeply saddening loss of a beloved, and joyful thoughts of a blissful liaison with another woman, are among several stories presented in Sringaram. Every story is connected to the contemporary human world, a relatively untapped fountain of inspiration even today, by classical dances.
Swaroopa’s Sringaram is undoubtedly created in the time-perfected template of classical Bharatnatyam: telling stories with its exquisite and elegant movements and mudras. However, her unorthodox interpretation of sensuous love of mere mortals through Bharatnatyam, highlights its flexibility and vibrancy as a truly contemporary performing medium.
Swaroopa Sringaram Tales of Love
Besides the sequence of the LGBTQI+ ruling, another unusual arrangement for classical dance in Swaroopa’s show was met with hearty laughter. The nayika lovingly waves her husband off on a trip, then rushes to the back door to coax her hesitant lover inside. This delightful portrayal of a not-so-uncommon life situation, rendered through classical dance, was warmly received by the audience.
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