- So I was born in a city called Guntur, and I was youngest of the three.

I had a beautiful childhood growing up there, and that's where my dance training has started.

So my dad was into performing arts a lot, so he wanted me to be an artist.

I loved attending the dance studio there.

My heavy training is in the classical dance styles.

Classical dance styles, you use a classical literature, classical composition, classical music, and they happen in a different languages.

India is very rich in different languages.

So you need to be knowledgeable in all of that to be able to take what's available in music and put that into the context of the dance, and also do the storytelling and entertain the audience who might not be familiar with what's happening with the dance and the music.

And then when I teach, I need to be able to discuss with the student and help them understand so they can project that story and music very well.

So within a one genre of style, there's different variations to it.

So this is very common in classical dancing.

So I learned Kuchipudi, Bharatnatyam, Andhranatyam, Mohiniyattam, and also dabbled into other styles.

There's a lot of storytelling in our dances.

The stories are about some mythological stories.

So our mythology is extensive.

And as you know, this art form comes from Indian culture.

In Indian culture, we have a lot of mythological figures and they each have their own stories, and the poetry and the composers come up with these stories.

So as a choreographer or as a performer, what to do is you take that basic standard poetry and composition and you input all the intricate stories within that.

We as dancers, we don't talk, we have to express the story.

In the same one person, one performer has to do a multitude of characters.

Costuming is extremely important, and Indian costuming comes from ancient times.

So for females, we wear something called sari.

And the sari weaving is a very ancient tradition.

And even though British colonized for 400 years, we never let go of our culture.

Our clothing is a representation in identity of our culture.

And also we have something called temple jewelry that we wear.

These pieces are, again, we have the master artist, master jewelry artist who create this jewelry.

In our family, women go through high school and then they usually get married and become homemakers.

In my case, I was always interested in higher education, so I came to University of Cincinnati and pursued graduate studies.

The community here is very open-minded so Cincinnati became home.

When I started this Cultural Centre of India years ago, it was about passing on what I know as an art to others.

Cultural Centre of India is about bringing the culture of our heritage arts to the Ohio community.

So we teach, perform, do workshops where people want to learn more about diversity, inclusion, equality, and all through art, through music, through dance, through expressing ourselves.

I like both being a performing artist and a teacher.

And teaching is so much fun because I have students who are three to adults.

But the teaching processes, you are making a difference in a person's life.

- Padma as an educator and an artist of classical Indian dance has transmitted her culture through the community.

She loves what she does and she treasures the art form.

Padma is one of those exemplary artists, and I think something that's different about her is that she really goes to the community, goes to college dance programs and schools.

And you know, one of the things is, when people think about dance, they think about ballet, modern perhaps, and they may not think about classical Indian dance, which has been around for thousands of years.

- When kids are growing up here, they go to school and they have, you know, they understand the mainstream American culture and they enjoy it and they celebrate it.

But at home, their parents are helping them to learn their own heritage.

So we are not a commercial dance studio.

We are hundreds of kids come and go.

That's not what we do.

We are not commercialized.

We go for true artistry.

And a lot of our students win many awards, many scholarships, regional to a higher level, to national level recognition because it's a total development.

So my job is, once I identify their inner artist, I need to unlock that.

These kids are proteges and they have the talent already built in.

I just have to bring it out.

I'm constantly demonstrating to my students of how the art should be done and how it should be pursued, how it should be celebrated, and how it should elevate the spirits of the audience.

In every performance, there's audience education.

(audience applauds) You know, we hear on the news so many things, you know, that people are not getting along.

You know, we should respect each other, but when we go perform, or when we are asked to come and perform, I never see that.

The minute we walk in, we are artist.

So that respect for the artist is there, regardless of where I go in Ohio or beyond Ohio.

So it just, I would say, diminishes all the barriers people have in their mind.

(soft bright music)