Karuna Sagari
Residency with Karuna Sagari
The Melkote Residency
Three days of dance, Sangam poetry, and stillness in a temple town
Over three days in the temple town of Melkote, a select group of serious dancers will learn a new choreographic work, sit with the Sangam terrain it grows from, approach the craft of Nritta with Meera Sreenarayanan, and live for a while inside a rhythm the city doesn’t allow. Learning the piece is the anchor, the immersion around it is the reason to come.
For the first time, Karuna Sagari will teach a Sangam work: her 17-minute choreographic interpretation of an Akam poem from the Akananuru. The poem, by Kurungudi Marudanar, is set to the raga Kharaharapriya. It belongs to the Mullai landscape and moves between nritta and abhinaya.
Places are few, and they are meant to be. This is for dancers who are looking for immersion.
IN-PERSON DETAILS:
Date: 28, 29, 30 August, 2026
IN-PERSON at Janapada Collective (Hosa Jeevana Daari), Hosahalli, Karnataka
Fees:
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₹20,500 - Fully Inclusive. This covers:
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All food and stay for the residency.
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Round-trip local travel, Mysore → Melkote → Mysore
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The original professional audio recording of the piece.
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A reference video of the choreography to keep.
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Travel: The participant has to take care of their own travel to Mysore. We will share the contact details from Mysore to Melkote once you are selected.
ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
ABOUT THE PIECE: Akananuru - Subverting the Alpha Male
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Befriending a 2,000-year-old culture:
The Akananuru belongs to Sangam literature, poetry that has survived for two thousand years. A large part of the residency is given to learning how to read it, sit with it, and make it one’s own — how a dancer draws internal feeling from an external landscape, and how this ancient grammar of emotion still speaks. This is
not background reading. It is the ground the choreography stands on, and often the part that changes dancers most.
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The craft of Nritta with Meera Sreenarayanan:
For two of the three days, the accomplished Bharatanatyam artist Meera Sreenarayanan joins the residency. She will take some complex passages of her own nritta compositions and open it up — building toward it through a sequence of intermediate steps, so participants see the layered, patient technique that sits beneath what finally dazzles on stage. The intent is not to learn a full piece but something rarer — a look at how such technique is constructed, step by step. For those who care about craft over repertoire, it is worth the journey on its own.
Around the structured sessions, there is time to do what dancers so seldom get to do together: talk about dance, think about it, and simply be with it, unhurried, in company that speaks the language.
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The place: Melkote & Janapada Seva Trust:
Melkote is a historic temple town beside Mysore. The residency is hosted by the Janapada Seva Trust, founded in 1960, a living community built on self-reliance and handwork, where khadi is still spun and woven by hand. Life there follows an older, slower rhythm than the city’s.Melkote itself is monumental. Dancers can move in the mandapams of the temple. They can walk out of a session and pass historical treasures standing there almost casually, as though by the way. And at night they can lie back on warm rock and watch a sky the city has long forgotten.
YOU WILL LEARN:
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A 17-minute choreographic interpretation of an Akam poem from the Akananuru.
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About the Mullai landscape and its association with waiting, return, and emotional endurance.
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About the Sangam way of linking external landscape with internal human feeling.
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A piece that employs both nritta (pure dance) and abhinaya (emotive dance).
WHO IS IT FOR?
The residency is deliberately selective. It is meant for serious dancers who:
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Have given at least 15 years to their learning.
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Care about technique and understanding far more than adding pieces to a repertoire.
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Want to go deep into the how and why beneath the beauty.