Sowgandhika Krishnan

I started learning the Indian Classical Dance form Bharatanatyam in Pandhanallur tradition at the age of three and a half under Guru Prasanna Panicker Nambiar in Mumbai. I can safely say dance has been my companion for life. My interest in the arts took me towards theatre and another classical dance style Oddisi (Guru Jhelum Paranjpe) during my university days. My educational background in management and my consulting experience and teaching experience with business schools have made me look at my art as a way of innovatively training, educating and story telling.

My dance theatre productions explore Indian stories and are presented in a contemporary style with dialogues in English. I have thirteen dance theatre productions (full length and short) to my credit – scripted, choreographed and directed by me.

My journey as a choreographer extends to short films and an upcoming feature film. My maiden dance film ‘Speechless’ won the Special Mention Award at the Movie Screen Festival. It was nominated at the Seize the Film Festival for a Festival Award (Films that change perspective). It was also selected to other festivals. My work behind the camera extends to working as a First Assistant Director and Second Unit Director for short films. I studied filmmaking with Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), India’s premier film school and with NFTS UK – UK’s premier film school.

An MBA from HEC Paris (ranked no.1 in Europe 2020, by Financial Times) with post graduate certifications from Wharton, SDA Bocconi and Yale University, I believe art can be used to educate, entertain, and create a better society and workplace. It can be used in storytelling to effect social change, impactful sales, improve branding, foster empathy and improve customer centric working, enhance leadership, foster better understanding and assimilation of corporate culture, and to sell products and ideas. I combine theatre and management concepts to design and deliver innovative theatre based value driven corporate training programmes.