(upbeat music) - Nitya Nritya Foundation presents a solo dance performance honoring a 19th-century female Indian freedom fighter.

Jyothsna Sainath joins us to share how this powerful piece brings history to life.

Hi there, Jyothsna.

Thank you so much for being here.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

- So this is your creation of an incredibly remarkable woman who's probably not known in the whole narrative of the Indian story.

- She isn't actually, and so "Kitturu Rani Chennamma," Rani in most Indian languages means Queen, Chennamma is her name, and Kitturu is the name of the principality that she ruled over.

And this is a small principality situated in the south of India.

And her actions really preceded what is today referred to as the First War of Indian independence by almost three decades.

So she was really a path breaker in many ways.

And she resisted the growth of British colonial hegemony with arms.

She was one of the first few rulers to do this.

And she faced so much personal tragedy in her own life.

She lost her entire family.

Of course, her husband passed, and then she lost two sons in the process.

And she could very well have chosen a life of comfortable retirement, which was open to her, but she still decided to stand up for her self-respect and the self-respect of her principality.

And that's why she's just so truly extraordinary, even by today's standards, right?

And so I was really inspired to explore her life.

Her life is not unknown to people who come from my state, which is the state of Karnataka in India, but somehow her story is pretty lost in the national narrative of the freedom movement and so on and so forth.

So it's a pretty remarkable and dramatic life.

And I worked on this with Maya Kulkarni, who's a choreographer based in the East Coast.

- Wow.

It's gonna be an incredible performance, and I'm really looking forward to it.

- Thank you.

- It's a remarkable story, and thank you so much for sharing it with us.

- Thank you.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming production by the Nitya Nritya Foundation, it's November 16th at four o'clock at the Mid Valley Performing Arts.

Go to nityanritya.com.

(upbeat music) That's nityanritya.com.

I'm Mary Dickson.

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