PADMA SUBRAHMANYAM... is an internationally reputed dancer . After a full course of conventional training in classical dance (Bharata Natyam) and with a Master's degree in music, she ventured into unexplored realms of research on "Natya Sastra" ( Science of Dramaturgy), an ancient treatise in Sanskrit language written by Sage Bharata, and was awarded the Doctorate for her thesis on "Karanas in Indian Dance and Sculpture."

Her INSTITUTION..."Nrithyodaya" was founded by her father, Director K.Subrahmanyam, a progressive nationalist and a parental personality in the cultural field. This institution which is 50 years old in Chennai, India has been the place where for the first time the gap between theory and practice has been bridged under the able guidance of Padma who has revived an obsolete dance technique and has transalated it to modern practice based on teh "Natya Sastra".

As a CHOREOGRAPHER, DANCER AND MUSIC COMPOSER... she has been widely acknowledged for her creativity. She has to her credit an expansion of the use of the entire body in stylistic expression, and fast foot work for the ramification of rhythm. Another forte of Padma is her facial expression with clarity in communication.She has revived the technique of mono-acting type of dance dramas apart from choreographing a dozen of normal dance dramas and more than fifty independant dance numbers. The "JATAYU MOKSHAM" from "Ramayana" set to the overture of "ROMEO JULIET" of Tchaikovsky and "GAJENDRA MOKSHAM" from the Indian mythology set to the music of Miagi Michio, the blind genius composer from Japan are some of her experimental choreographies that was well recieved by the audience in India and Abroad.

KARANAS... which are 108 dance units described in the "Natya Sastra", had been the subject of research for Padma for 20 years. As a result of her research she was ordained by His Holiness Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Swamigal, Jagadguru Sankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, to design a new set of 108 Karana figures of Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvathi for a new temple of Nataraja (the king of dance) built recently in Satara in Maharashtra, India. A moment of the Karana movements depicted in these sculptural codifications are designed to be different from the exsisting Karana sculptures in Thanjavur, Chidambaram and Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu. Twelve years after completing her design of these 108 Karanas for the Satara Temple, she came across a historic discovery that the remarkable feature of most of the karana series in about fifty Karana sculptures in the world renowned archeolgical monument of Prambanan in Central Java Indonesia, belonging to the 9th century A.D. were very similar to her own design of the Karana sculptures for the Temple at Satara. This has become an irrefutable proof proving the authenticity of her reconstruction of the Karanas. This is a "link beyond time and space", and this became the subject of the book of an Italian archeologist Dr.Alessandra who did her post- doctoral research under Padma through the British Academy, London.