Hyderabad’s Sandhya Raju breaking myths through dance forms

Sandhya Raju shares her balancing act as actor and producer and importance of bringing awareness on classical dance and music

Hyderabad: Actor Sandhya Raju couldn’t get a better Telugu debut than ‘Natyam’ as she has been longing to tell a story incorporating dance and music.”It was really overwhelming to see celebrities coming in praise for my film. Recently, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu garu too lauded ‘Natyam’ when it was screened in New Delhi. Despite suffering from backache, he could watch the entire film and appreciated our work. And later, positive words from Megastar Chiranjeevi garu gave us enough confidence,” says the Hyderabad-born dancer who bankrolled the film and played the lead in ‘Natyam’.

A trained classical dancer, Sandhya Raju made her debut on silver screen with Malayalam film ‘Careful’ in 2017, the remake of Kannada film ‘U Turn’. Later, she acted in a couple of short-films directed by Revanth Korukonda. Of late, she realised that film is a medium through which she could take dance forms to a larger audience. “After my debut in Malayalam, I was restricted to short-films hoping to do scripts that excite me. After knowing how stories that were made into films through dance forms influenced audiences, we hopped on to produce ‘Natyam’ with director Revanth,” she says.

---

Not a monotonous flick

Sandhya says ‘Natyam’ isn’t going to be a monotonous flick that speaks about just dance. “‘Natyam’ has various layers. There is a ‘guru-shishya’ track, there is a western dancer and a grey character through which a conflict point arises. A love track is also incorporated into it. The story is set in a fictional village called Natyam. Various beliefs and superstitions hold the drama in the village. However, the screenplay has commercial elements to get that desired template. However, it won’t disappoint audiences,” she says.

Balancing act

‘Natyam’ features Kamal Kamaraju in a key role. Aditya Menon, who took a brief gap in Telugu, will be seen in a positive role, contrary to his image as a villain. Having given more than 1,000 stage performances across various platforms, Sandhya Raju felt her film ‘Natyam’ could bring an awareness among people on the dance forms which are on the verge of neglect.
“We got to explore the importance of classical and western dance forms in ‘Natyam’. The story narrates how a woman goes about dispelling the myths among the villages through her sheer grit. I’ve got good support from my family during the journey. There’s a negative notion that industry doesn’t encourage young talent which is later proved to be wrong. It was quite a challenge to do a balancing act as a producer and an actor on the sets,” she adds.