Moving Into Self-Discovery: Madhu's Journey
- Aswati Anand
- 18 hours ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
For Madhu Rao, movement has never been just about dance. It has been a way of finding herself - of understanding her body, testing its possibilities, and discovering what happens when she simply keeps showing up.
“I believe that the human body is built to move. It’s our natural state of being,” she says.
True to that belief, Madhu is rarely still. You might find her running in a park, training in another dance form, working out at the gym, practising yoga, or teaching a room full of students how to listen to their bodies. For her, watching people move is inspiring. “It could either be in a dance class or at a party, a community dance—the freshness one feels when they move inspires me to move. Movement doesn’t have to be a structured thing!”
As a dance teacher and yoga coach, Madhu is particularly interested in the mind-body connection—a relationship that can easily become disconnected in modern lifestyles. Her first composition (co-created with our company dancer, Sanjana Shankar), Back to the T's, explored this very idea: returning to an awareness of the body and its relationship with the mind.
However, Madhu's own journey into movement didn't begin with an ambition to be a professional dancer.
It started with watching someone else dance
Dance was not always part of Madhu’s identity. Growing up, she watched her sister, a Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher, rehearse and teach at home. She enjoyed watching, even imitating the movements privately, but never quite imagined herself as a dancer.
Part of that hesitation came from growing up in a body that was frequently commented upon. She was skinny, and during adolescence, people made jokes about what dancing - or wearing a sari- would look like on her frame. The comments stayed with her. “I thought I was superior because I was into music and people dance to the music,” she laughs. “But really, I was just a kid who really wanted to learn how to dance but was very insecure.”
Then, in college, she saw a senior perform belly dance.
“I was like, holy f**k, I am learning this.”
She enrolled when the senior began teaching near her home. The classes lasted barely a month or two before the teacher stopped. Madhu took it as a sign that perhaps dance was simply not meant for her.
She moved on. A couple of years later, in 2016, she saw another advertisement for a belly dance class—this time in Jayanagar.
She enrolled again. This time, she stayed. Soon, dance became something Madhu was willing to work around everything else. She would wake up at 5 a.m. to train in Indiranagar several times a week before travelling to college in Ramaiah. The commute alone was significant, but she kept making the time.
That idea of repeatedly choosing to show up has become central to the way Madhu thinks about both learning and teaching. “It could be your thousandth first approach, but it is still your first approach for that class, that particular date, that particular time.”
Her own experience taught her that the first step is often the hardest.
From one dance form to another
Madhu's training expanded from Fusion belly dance, to contemporary dance, to basic ballet and other movement practices. She also spent brief periods learning Bharatanatyam, jazz and Kalari, among other forms.
She describes cross-training almost like learning languages. “If you know only one language, you can only talk in one language. But if you know many languages, you can add your own unique language by bringing in other vocabulary.”
Each form gave her something different: a way of using the spine, a new relationship with the arms, a different quality of projection, rhythm or musicality. At one point, she took up waacking simply because she felt her belly dance vocabulary was too stationary.
“Why are my hands not moving?”
So she went looking for another language. That instinct- to investigate, experiment and ask what else is possible- runs through her entire movement journey. She notes: “Belly dance and yoga kind of stuck together, and I started to accept my body more. I became more confident and I felt like I had something to offer.”
Leaving the Corporate career behind
Madhu joined Nrityakosh in July 2020, during the pandemic. Like many dancers during that period, she had the opportunity to explore teachers and training spaces beyond geographical boundaries. For Madhu, it was the right moment to ask a question that had been growing in her mind: What more could she do with the language of belly dance?
“The minute I stepped into the advanced class, I felt like a complete beginner again.”
As she grew within the school, her journey as a dancer, company member and teacher developed alongside her yoga practice. Eventually, she reached a point where she knew dance needed her full attention.“One fine day I sat down and thought, I'm young. I can do it. If this doesn't work out, I'll come back to my corporate life.”
She didn't have a perfectly mapped-out plan. She simply decided to allow herself to see where dance could take her. The rest, as she puts it, is history.
When the body asks for more
The deeper Madhu went into dance, the more questions emerged. She began to notice how little anatomy was explicitly discussed in many dance environments. That led her towards yoga - not initially because she wanted to teach it, but because she wanted to understand herself better. “I never did TTC with the intention of becoming a teacher. I did TTC with an intention of understanding myself better in terms of a physical human body.”
Her first proper yoga class was, in fact, part of her teacher-training course. She had been athletic as a child—particularly good at running, badminton and throwball—but yoga had always seemed boring. Her mother had sent her to yoga classes as a child, and she remembers doing little more than shavasana.
Years later, she completed her first teacher training course and found herself unexpectedly transformed by it. “Little did I know I'd grow up one day and become a yoga instructor.”
She went on to train further, including in Rishikesh, and became a 500-hour RYT-certified yoga coach in Hatha and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. What began as curiosity became another pillar of her practice.
Yoga taught her to pay attention to breath, posture, anatomy, strength, and recovery. “I was instantly a better human,” she recalls.
It also taught her that different bodies need different things. That understanding now sits at the heart of the way she teaches dance.
The teacher who sees the person before the dancer
Madhu's classes are rooted in a deceptively simple idea: no two bodies are the same. Her students come from different ages, professions, bodies and levels of experience. Most are not professional dancers, nor do they necessarily want to become one. “I don't want anyone to be doing it because I asked them to do it. I want them to do it because they want to do it and I'm just helping them do it.”
They may be working professionals carrying the weight of a difficult week, students balancing college, parents managing families, or simply people who have decided that these few hours belong to themselves.
Madhu believes an instructor has to account for that. “Once in a while, at least, you need to honour the fact that you don’t need to push everyone all the time.”
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