Mrinalini Sarabhai, pioneering classical dancer, acclaimed choreographer and beloved teacher of thousands of men and women, has died at her home in Ahmedabad at the age of 97. She is survived by her daughter Mallika, also a renowned dancer, and her son Kartikey, the founder of the Centre for Environment Education in Ahmedabad.

Sarabhai is credited as one of the dancers of her era who, along with Rukmani Devi Arundale, gave bharatnatyam respectability and pushed its creative boundaries. A 2012 documentary on her life and craft, directed by Yadavan Chandran and Mallika Sarabhai, contextualises Mrinalini Sarabhai as a dancer with a strong political and social conscience.

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Produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, the film begins with a droll voiceover by Tom Alter, which lists events big and small in 1949, the year that “a young Hindu woman called the ‘Hindu Atomic Bomb’ takes the world by storm.” Sarabhai was “a pioneer among those who gave classical Indian dance its respectability once more and showcased its magnificence to India and the world”, Alter says. Sunil Kothari, veteran dance critic adds, “She was a thinking woman. She mastered the technique, but she also thought, what do I do with this technique?”

Courtesy Public Service Broadcasting Trust

Sarabhai set up the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in 1948 in Ahmedabad, where she moved after getting married to scientist Vikram Sarabhai in 1942. The academy has trained thousands of men and women in dance, bharatnatyam, music, kalaripayattu and puppetry, and it has also produced several productions. Here is Mallika performing her mother’s composition, Memory is A Ragged Fragment of Eternity, a response to suicide among women that was first staged in 1969.

The danseuse's death was announced by her daughter with a Facebook post that read, "My mother just left for her eternal dance." The two shared a deep relationship. They detail their relationship and the different meanings dance has for them in this BBC interview below from 2003.