Mrinalini Sadananda

Mrinalini Sadananda is an internationally recognized Kuchipudi dancer, an Indian classical dance. She is also a distinguished teacher and an outstanding choreographer. Mrinalini Sadananda belongs to a family of artists. All her seven brothers and sisters excelled in one art form or another. Her father Vinjamuri Parthasarathy Iyengar was an established lawyer but had keen interest in music and loved violin. Her mother Smt. Kamala Devi was a housewife and an excellent violinist.

Mrinalini Sadananda started learning dance at a very young age. She has been trained by many Gurus, which include great names such as Dr. Vempati Chinna Sathyam, Burra Subramanya Sastry, Chinta Raddha Krishnamurty, Adinarayana Sarma, Mahankali Surya Narayana, Sathya Priya Ramana and her sister Mrs. Hemalatha Naramha Chari. Apart from these teachers, the contribution of her Drama teacher, Sri Mandapati Ramalingeswara Rao cannot be forgotten, who taught the importance of facial expressions in dance for which she is very famous.

Mrinalini Sadananda married Dr. K Sadananda, whose father Sri. Kuntimaddi Seshasarma was a great scholar of Telugu and Sanskrit and mother was Jaya Lakshmi. Mrinalini Sadananda’s husband was very supportive and encouraged her to pursue her dreams and follow her passion for dance even after they emigrated to the United States. She traveled extensively across the United States and performed in various places. After few years she took the role of a teacher and passed this art to innumerable youngsters. In the metropolitan Washington DC area, she was a volunteer teacher at Gandhi Memorial Center and Chinmaya Mission and taught for seven years in each of these institutions.

In the year 1993, Mrinalini Sadananda established a dance and music institute Kalamandapam in the Washington Metropolitan Area. The institute trains children in theory and practice of Kuchipudi dance, Carnatic Music on the Violin, Keyboard, and also Yoga. This non-profit organization is based on the classical Indian “gurukul” principles. The dance Academy is known for its group productions such as: “Bharat Sambhavam”, “The Advent and Glory of India”, at prestigious John F Kennedy Center of Performing Arts in Washington DC, “Sarvam Vishnu Mayam” in Beltsville, Maryland, “Sambhavami Yuge Yuge” in Gaitherburg, Maryland, and ”Ramayanam”, the greatest epic of all times, at Sri Shiva Vishnu Temple in Maryland etc.