Pooja Hegde

Pooja Hegde grew up in the port city of Mangalore, where the confluence of Tulu, Kannada, and Konkani cultures created a uniquely rich artistic environment. Her introduction to dance came through Yakshagana, the traditional theatre form of coastal Karnataka, but it was Kuchipudi that captured her heart. She began training at age eight under guru Vempati Ravi Shankar's student Lakshmi Gopalaswami at the Mangalore School of Dance, and her natural talent was evident from the start. After completing her B.Sc. in Psychology from St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, Pooja moved to Bangalore to pursue contemporary dance training at the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts. The centre's fusion of Indian classical forms with contemporary global dance practices expanded her artistic vocabulary enormously. She began creating her own choreographic works that blended Kuchipudi's rhythmic precision with the fluidity of contemporary dance, and her pieces were showcased at the Attakkalari India Biennial. Her film debut in the Kannada musical Nritya Loka (2023), directed by Girish Kasaravalli's student Sumanth, cast her as a Kuchipudi dancer navigating the competitive world of reality television. The film's innovative dance sequences, which Pooja co-choreographed, won the Karnataka State Award for Best Choreography. She followed this with a role in the Telugu dance film Nataraja, playing a contemporary dancer rediscovering her classical roots.