About
To honour the artistic heritage of India and equip the next generation with the tools, classical, contemporary and digital, to shape the future.
Padatik, meaning foot-soldier, is one of the premier performing-arts institutions in India, founded in Kolkata in 1972 by the theatre director and actor Shyamanand Jalan with his wife, the Kathak dancer Chetana Jalan, and the actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda. Central to the renaissance of modern Indian and especially Hindi theatre in Kolkata, it staged bold productions of Vijay Tendulkar, Mahasweta Devi, Girish Karnad and others, and through the Padatik Dance Centre, launched in 1989, became a leading school of classical and contemporary dance. As a non-profit cultural and educational institution it continues to bridge its five-decade performing-arts legacy with new education programmes.
Shyamanand Jalan, credited with the renaissance of Hindi theatre in Kolkata from the 1960s onward, left the Anamika group in 1971 to found Padatik in 1972, giving him the freedom to stage bolder work by Tendulkar, Mahasweta Devi and others. Padatik organised the first Chhau festival bringing the Seraikella, Mayurbhanj and Purulia forms onto one platform in 1977, hosted major international theatre and dance conferences with figures such as Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba, and ran workshops with gurus including Kelucharan Mohapatra and Birju Maharaj. Its dance centre continues to train performers in Kathak and contemporary dance, and the institution works today in partnership with bodies including the Sangeet Natak Akademi, ICCR and Tata Trusts.
Padatik is one of the foremost performing-arts institutions of eastern India, central to the modern history of Hindi theatre in Kolkata and a major centre for classical and contemporary dance for over five decades.
[Atlas Perspective] Profiled as an Institution (Operator) spanning theatre and dance. Padatik's history connects it to Chhau, Kathak and the modern Indian theatre movement, and to major figures of Indian and world performance who worked with it. It is a registered non-profit working with national cultural bodies.