Savitha Sastry

Savitha Sastry was born in Hyderabad, and later lived in Mumbai before her family relocated to their home town of Chennai. She started her training in Bharatanatyam under the tutelage of Guru Mahalingam Pillai at the Sri Rajarajeswari Bharatha Natya Kala Mandir in Mumbai, and later with Adyar K Lakshman and the Dhananjayans in Chennai. She did her schooling from the P.S Senior Secondary School in Chennai, and her graduation from the Stella Maris College. In 1986, she featured as the lead dancer in the Tamil film Ananda Tandavam, a production of her Guru  Adyar K Lakshman. She pursued her Masters degree in the United States, where she majored in Neuroscience.

Through the 80s, 90s and the first decade of the millennium, Savitha had performed mostly to traditional repertoires of Bharatanatyam. She produced and choreographed a few full length presentations such as Krishna: The Supreme Mystic and Purushartha during this phase. Savitha was credited to have a high degree of technical proficiency to her kinetics of the dance form in being able to deliver it with grace and technique demanded of Bharatanatyam performers. Critic Hamsa Venkat from Sydney reported " Savitha's crisp nritta (pure dance), clean lines and flawless aramandi was a breath of fresh air, and truly inspirational for students of dance.". The Audition Panel of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival described her dancing with the words "Moves like a temple sculpture come to life".
Savitha has been critically lauded not only for her technique, but also for her innovations with the art form to take it to a wider audience. Critic Fozia Yasin of the Asian Age notes that Savitha "aims to bring about a renaissance in the traditional art form by marrying the aesthetics of Bharatanatyam with the power of an intelligent and novel story-line.".[10] Critic Nonika Singh of theTribune wrote, "Knocking down pigeonholes as she breaks free, she hopes to inspire more and more aspiring dancers to soar along, in the vast expanse of tradition minus the baggage of restrictive thinking!" .