Mythili is incisive in her approach, questioning cultural and social norms, while pushing the boundaries of her practice of the art form, particularly around femininity and aesthetics. Her creative introspections acknowledge and draw fodder from her experiences as a mother and a first-generation child of immigrants, as well as the complexity of her identity as a dancer of caste privilege in India, while simultaneously a female artist of color in the US.

She has toured her own solo productions throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, India, and Singapore, and had the honor of working with director Ang Lee in the award-winning film Life of Pi, cast as the wife of the title character. In 2019, Mythili was nominated by celebrated dancer/choreographer Akram Khan as “Choreographer of the Future” for UK-based Dance Umbrella’s Four by Four Commissions, premiering her solo work HERE and NOW at their festival that year.

Mythili is a recipient of the “Creation to Performance” grant from the Irvine Dance Foundation and “Artistic Innovation” grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has received numerous accolades from premiere institutions of dance and music in India as well. In 2021, she received the National Dance Project touring grant from NEFA for She’s Auspicious, which premiered in Hamburg at the Reflektor Festival, curated by  Anoushka Shankar.

For the last few years, I have immersed myself in the creation of work that reflects on and challenges contradictions in social values- past and present- through mythology and cultural practices, particularly those centering around femininity. Finding the language to do this through the aesthetics of Bharatanatyam (classical Indian Dance) which are rooted in beauty, harmony, and upliftment, has required a re-imagining and re-framing of form and performance.

But alongside the instinct to embody the rage, violence, marginalization and hypocrisy of our extremely divisive world, sits the desire to reconnect with the things that unite humanity. How easy it is becoming to forget that!
 

Creating Jwala was one of the first times in my artistic journey that I wasn’t negotiating a cultural narrative and how to make it accessible to international audiences; It was an opportunity to dance my personal story and know that love, loss, release, and hope needed no translation.
 

This new iteration is reimagined for the current moment and our ever present world, leading to interpretations that reimagine the contradictions inherent in our humanity.