A well-known Kathak exponent, Shama has worked as a performer, teacher, choreographer, artistic director, and creative thinker for more than 40 years.

Shama Bhate is a Kathak exponent and a dance guru. She also runs a dance institute named “Nadroop” in Pune.

Recalling her childhood, Shama says she was born in Belgaum but her family shifted to Nashik when she was very young. Her father wanted her to learn classical dance, so her dance training started when she was only seven years old. She did her schooling from Ahilyabai School and did her B.Sc from Fergusson College.

Talking about her professional journey, Shama says that when she told her parents that she wanted to make dance her profession, her parents were very worried. But she had made up her mind that she would make her career in dance and make a name for herself in dance like her guru Rohini Bhate.

When asked about her role models, Shama says that she considers her mentor Rohini Bhate as her role model. She was so inspired by her that she not only wanted to dance like her, but to even look like her.

When asked about her challenges, Shama says that her first challenge was that by the time she decided to make dance her career, she was already in her 20s. She became serious about her career after taking her decision. She used to practice continuously for 5-6 hours everyday. Because of which she was completely cut off from the outside world.

She did not know how to deal with people, how to develop public relations. She was not as updated as her peers due to which she used to consider herself behind them somewhere. Due to this she had also lost some good opportunities and was not able to make her identity as an individual performer. She feels another difficulty she faced was because she was residing at Pune and the center of Kathak and “peeth” is in Delhi so, it took her a long time to be known to those Kathak dance associations and organizers.

But when her students started performing on stage, she made sure they got the right platform and recognition.

When asked about her achievements, Shama says that as the one who had no dancer in her family in seven generations, she became a star in Kathak dance and made a mark, she considers it her most important achievement.

She is also proud of some of her most important creative performances - such as Nishabd - a word distinction performed without sound, picturaistation of Kasturba Gandhi in her dance piece- “Kasturba Gandhi”, something never done before in Kathak. She has also done dance experiments with contemporary and Carnatic music which were never done before.

She likes to listen to music in her free time, in which she especially likes to listen to Ustad Alla Rakha Khan. Apart from this, she likes to go on long walks and enjoy nature.

When asked what motivates her in this field, Shama says that dance has a connection with music, nature, sculpture art, literature and painting. When you understand all these aspects, you understand their essence, then you become a holistic dancer. She gets inspired by the thought that everything is related to each other. All this motivates her to develop some creative dance performances when she looks at the world from her Kathak perspective.