Living Many Creative Lives, Vidya Refuses to Choose Just One

"Jack of all trades, master of none" is how Vidya Prabhu jokingly describes herself.

Her mother might remember it differently. As a child, Vidya's schedule was already packed: Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music, anything related to arts that caught her interest. Her mother would tell her to do one thing at a time.

Vidya refused. She still does.

Today, she works in marketing, acts, models, dances, and performs. Her YouTube presence and Instagram profile reflect that breadth of creative work, while her IMDb profile places her within the world of screen acting. And in 2026, another identity has become official: she is now a company dancer with Nrityakosh.

The obvious question is: how does she do all of it?

Vidya's answer is that she doesn't think of herself as doing all of it. “I don’t really think I’m juggling. I just feel I’m doing everything that I like, over time.”

From Bharatnatyam to belly dance

Her relationship with dance began when she was a child. From second grade, Bharatanatyam was part of her school routine, with classes three mornings a week before school. She performed regularly and continued training after changing schools. In college, she was part of performance teams that travelled regularly.

Her eventual relationship with belly dance began with a memory of Shakira. As a teenager, Vidya had tried to imitate one of the singer's movements and remembers her hips hurting for days afterwards. Years later, after engineering, she came across a beginner belly-dance class conveniently located near her home. She took it as a sign.

What initially attracted her was the challenge. Belly dance wasn't just about learning a sequence of movements; it required concentration, isolation, layering and control. She eventually progressed from student to teacher, discovering that teaching also forced her to remain connected to the fundamentals.

And the longer she stayed with the form, the more complicated it became. More than eight years later, she still feels like a beginner.

“Every time you feel like you’ve learned something, there’s something new that you know that you’ve not learned and you become a student all over again.”

That humility is central to how she thinks about dance. “Even now I still feel I’ve barely scratched the surface.”

The performer, the artist

Dance was never Vidya's only route to performance. Her childhood fascination with pageants and the camera developed into modelling, which eventually led to acting and film work. She describes the three disciplines - dance, acting and modelling -as different expressions of essentially the same fascination.

“As a dancer, or even as an actor, you get to learn so much about your body, so much about your ways of expressing. It’s all the same.”

Her comfort in front of a camera helped, but so did something she had developed through years of dance: the ability to express herself physically. This is also where her marketing career enters the picture.

She works as a marketeer at a startup, where she enjoys the creative problem-solving that comes with strategy, ideas and execution. She likes that the job allows her to use a different part of her brain.

“When I do all these things together, they’re all different parts of me. I feel they tap into different sides of me, and they make me extremely happy. Maybe if I’m doing only marketing, I’ll just be bored of it. Or maybe if I just dance, maybe I don’t know, I think I’ll be bored of it.”

Why Nrityakosh made sense

Vidya first encountered Debapriya through an Indian Fusion weekender organised by Nrityakosh in 2024. She had wanted to explore Kathak and was intrigued by the combination of dance forms she saw in Deba's work. Soon after, she joined a production module - with only 3 months left for the show!

Within three months, she was learning four or five different choreographies, which included a complicated Saidi piece and a 10-minute Qawali Fusion, Haiderium. It was exactly the kind of challenge she enjoys surrendering to.

It wasn't just the challenge of the choreographies that drew her in - it was also the discipline of the school: classes beginning on time, focused training, and an environment where people were serious and invested in their own growth. She remembers being particularly inspired by Deba turning up to class while ill, saying she wouldn't perform full-out but that the dancers should.

“Her not full out was hundred times our full out that day.”

For Vidya, the people around her matter. That is part of what made becoming a company dancer meaningful. When she first encountered Nrityakosh, she was watching dancers she admired from the outside. Now she is part of that same group.

Being part of the Nrityakosh Company

Company training has also changed what learning dance means to her. An advanced class still involves a certain amount of instruction. The teacher demonstrates, corrects and directs.

Company work asks for something else. “You need to sit with yourself and figure things out and build that on your own.”

There may be a broad artistic direction, but the dancer has to make decisions within it. For Vidya, that requires another level of thinking. That shift - from executing something someone else has given you to sitting with yourself and figuring something out -is perhaps particularly significant for someone who has spent her life exploring different disciplines.

Company work has also returned Vidya to long-form storytelling. She remembers doing hour-long and hour-and-a-half Bharatanatyam pieces at school. College brought a gap from that kind of performance. Now she is back onstage for extended productions.

And she has discovered that long-form performance requires more than physical stamina. “To be able to dance, you first need to prepare your mind… to be able to deliver that to your audience for the longest time.”

The dancer has to hold the audience's attention, sustain energy and remain mentally present. Her goal is simple: “I want to keep the same level of energy till the end, deliver my best.”

The challenge excites her, "There’s nothing like being on stage for a longer time. I mean, I would just say bring it in.”

'Everythingholic'

People around Vidya are fascinated by the number of things she does. Some joke that she must have more than 24 hours in a day. Her partner wonders how she manages it all.

Vidya's answer is discipline. If she wants a class, she will rearrange her schedule around it. If she's travelling for a shoot, she'll take her laptop and work between takes. She doesn't see the different commitments as competing for her attention.

They are all things she has chosen. “If there’s a class I want, I’m this person, I’ll be there. Like I said, I cancel everything else for the class.”

She also believes adults shouldn't be too quick to abandon the curiosity they had as children. Responsibilities are real, she acknowledges. But so is the responsibility to make room for the things one genuinely wants to do. “If you’re passionate enough about something, I think we can make time for the world and achieve everything.”

https://youtu.be/wElHO_iS_vc?si=wkwnLN-U3msmYZZ1

There is something quietly radical about Vidya's refusal to choose. She is, by her own description, the only person in her entire bloodline working in this kind of creative space - as an artist, actor, dancer or model. And she is proud of it.

She doesn't see her multiple careers as evidence that she hasn't figured herself out. She sees them as evidence that she has.

“I should definitely explore and I should not be bound by one definition of what I do or like how my mom said, just stick to one. I think I should never do that and do 100 other things as long as you know, time permits or life permits”

That might be the most accurate description of Vidya's philosophy: not a lack of focus, but a refusal to believe that focus has to mean only one thing. Even now, as she steps into her newest chapter as a Nrityakosh company dancer, she isn't closing doors behind her. She is opening another one.

And, true to form, making room for it on an already very full plate.