Danseuse Geeta Chandran receives Lifetime Achievement Award

The Alumni Association of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications presented its first Lifetime Achievement Award to renowned classical dancer and Padmashri awardee Geeta Chandran at its 10th annual meet Connections on 27 February 2022.

Prof. Sanjay Dwivedi, Director General of IIMC, presented Geeta with the award.

This year marks the sixth year of the IIMCAA Awards, which are given to alumni working in journalism, public relations, advertising, and corporate communications. The Lifetime Achievement Awards will also begin this year.

According to the IIMC Alumni Association, after receiving her Masters degree from IIMC in 1984, Geeta Chandran worked as a Course Coordinator at IIMC for a year before joining NAMEDIA Foundation, where she worked alongside renowned media luminaries Nikhil Chakravorty and N.L. Chawla, former IIMC Director. She then worked briefly in NTPC's public relations department before committing full-time to Bharatanatyam, her passion since the age of five.

Indian classical dancer (Padmashri) Geeta Chandran uses her exceptional skill in Bharatanatyam as a force multiplier for the widest range of dance issues that have captured her attention: exploring linkages between body and mind; forging relationships between solo dancing, group dancing, and choreography; actualizing the links between the artist and society; and using dance as a medium for expressing abstract notions of Joy, Beauty, and Values, Aspirations, Myth and Spirituality.

Chandran, upon receiving the award, stated, "What I learned at IIMC laid the groundwork for my pedagogy of social communication through dance. All of my work in environmental, gender, and peace performances can be traced back to IIMC. That is something I will be eternally grateful for."

Geeta Chandran is renowned not only for her extensive knowledge of Bharatanatyam, but also for her Carnatic music (she is a trained and accomplished vocalist), her work in television, video and film, theatre, choreography, dance education, dance activism, and dance-issue journalism. And yet she seems to effortlessly catalyse all of these various vectors of creativity, as if they all flow from the very core of her being.

In order to "en-dance the universe," she engages in a variety of dance-related activities, including performing, teaching, conducting, singing, collaborating, organising, writing, and speaking to new youth audiences.