Bangalore-based Ronita Mookerji (26) is a danseuse with a difference. An alumna of Attakkalari — a performing arts charitable trust — she was the only Indian dancer to be selected for Dance Box’s choreographic residency ‘Kobe-Maizuru Exchange Programme’ convened last year in Japan. The exchange programme is an initiative of the Imperial Japanese government to promote art and culture.

While in Japan for the residency, together with a local theatre artist Keiko Yamaguchi, Ronita choreographed an Indo-Japanese dance performance which was premiered in the Red Brick House Museum, Maizuru — the oldest naval base in Japan. Nor is this the first time Ronita has designed a transcultural dance sequence. She has also worked with international choreographers  Rianto (Indoensia), Richard Seigal (Germany) and Kama Jezierska (Poland), among others.

A microbiology graduate of Kolkata’s well-known St. Xavier’s College, currently Ronita is a senior repertory dancer and instructor at the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore. “Attakkalari’s mission is to spread the reach of contemporary performance arts to make dance a viable career option for young people. To this end, the centre collaborates with video and digital artistes, composers, musicians and choreographers worldwide and is also a resource centre for young artistes from other countries interested in Indian culture, aesthetics and movement idioms,’’ says Ronita. 

The daughter of Pradip Mookerji, a Kolkata-based business executive, and mother Rani, also a business executive (Allied Photographics India Ltd), Ronita took to dance training in Bharatanatyam at the age of five and staged her arangetram (graduation performance) in 2006, after having studied and practiced Odissi dance under her guru Alokananda Roy. 

Her creative impulses are broad-based because classical dance apart, in various stages of her career she has studied kalarippayattu (a martial arts dance form of Kerala), classical ballet, contact improvisation, yoga and contemporary dance forms. An insatiable learner, next on Ronita’s development agenda are contemporary dance choreography therapy programmes in Europe and the UK, for which she intends to sign up this summer. 

Way to go, sister!

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

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