Jyothsna Sainath
Jyothsna started learning Bharatanatyam in Bangalore, India, at a young age and has been a student of renowned Gurus, namely the late Guru Padmini Ramachandran, Guru Radha Sridhar and the late Guru Narmada. It was under the loving tutelage of Guru Narmada, a student of Guru Tanjavoor Kittappa Pillai that Jyothsna evolved as a performer. She has also learned the Karanas from late Guru Sundari Santhanam, a senior student of the scholar Guru Dr. Padma Subramaniam. Jyothsna’s performance and choreography are informed by these various influences.
Jyothsna has been a recipient of Government of India scholarships throughout the course of her dancing education. Having performed her debut when she was 16 years old, she has gone on to combine a keen academic interest in dance with wide-ranging performing experience from dance ballets to solos to workshops, in India and elsewhere.
She has an MA in Performing Arts from Bangalore University, India; a course that she topped. She is also an auditioned ‘A’ Grade solo artiste for Doordarshan National Network, the television channel of the Government of India.
On moving to the US, Jyothsna has performed widely within the US and has conducted Bharatanatyam workshops and Master classes at various institutions & Universities in the Salt Lake valley and has been a guest choreographer at the Department of Dance, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jyothsna was awarded Individual Artist Career Empowerment Grants by the Salt Lake City Arts Council in 2022 and 2023 in the Tier I category to undertake arts projects in the valley. She also received an Artist Scholarship from Utah Division of Arts and Museums to build multi-media content for a solo production in 2022.
Most recently, Jyothsna was awarded the 2024 Fellowship for Dance by Utah Division of Arts & Museums as a mark of recognition of her sustained artistic work.
Jyothsna is the artistic director of the Nitya Nritya Dance Company, a dance performing and training company based in Salt Lake City and the President of the Nitya Nritya Foundation. Nitya Nritya Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to bringing the rich diversity of Indian classical arts to audiences in the Salt Lake valley.
