The IKKIVI Podcast: Exploring Fashion, Culture and Values · Nivi Murthy

S3E3: The Mind-Body Connection: Exploring Dance & Emotions with a Movement Artist | Vidya Patel

·44 min·2 clips

Vidya turns therapy and dissociation into “Don’t Mind Me,” premiered at Sadler’s Wells main stage.

Vulnerability opens the conversation. Vidya Patel talks about making a dance piece from therapy, the different parts inside the mind, and material she had not said out loud before. She does not try to clean it up into joy or a neater feeling. She follows what is there and lets the work put a little space around the experience. Dance becomes a way to stay with it without being swallowed by it. The episode follows her path from early Kathak training into her wider life as a Birmingham-based movement artist and performer. Her practice pulls in Indian classical dance, other movement languages, music, visual arts, and collaboration with many kinds of artists. The personal thread stays close. Identity, belonging, and empowerment come up, but they land through the work, not as slogans. Vidya is especially good on the emotional weather of a studio. She talks about choreographic feeling, the room's atmosphere, and the responsibility of noticing what people carry in with them. Some days include private grief. Some days are just hard. Dancers still have to work through ordinary human strain, and she does not treat care as a soft extra. Because dance comes from the body, breaks, conversation, and attention to energy become part of making honest work. Freelance life makes that sharper. Without sick pay or bereavement pay, the studio has to pay closer attention to what people need. Vidya notices when something feels off and asks how the room can be more useful, more humane, and better for everyone there. The ending stays practical, with pointers to Instagram, an updating YouTube channel, a possible newsletter, and UK touring with Thick and Tight in February.

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