How Sohini Karanth is building an ecosystem where instinct meets structure
“I remember being in the middle of designing an apartment project,” she says, “and thinking — I need something that keeps me going.” What followed wasn’t a strategy. It was a decision: one video a day, for 100 days. No audience plan. No expectation. Just a way to stay close to something that felt like home.
There’s a moment Sohini Karanth returns to often — not because it was grand, but because it was quiet. A small rented house in Mangalore. An indefinite lockdown. An architect, suddenly without sites to visit. A dancer, suddenly without space to move.
The first video was shot on her phone, after work. Simple, almost instinctive. But something shifted. “The response was unexpectedly warm,” she recalls. “And that encouragement kept me going.” What began as a coping mechanism became a ritual. By the end of those 100 days, an ecosystem had quietly begun to form.
“Creating your own space, even in the smallest way, can have a ripple effect far beyond what you imagine.”
Showing up without an outcome
Today, Sohini speaks about ‘creating your own opportunities’ not as a philosophy, but as a daily practice. In the studio, it looks like curiosity — exploring movement, not from demand but from interest. On social media, it looks like consistency. “I don’t treat it as just a promotional tool,” she says. “I see it as an extension of my practice.”
Beyond the screen, it translates into a school, workshops, collaborative spaces, and large-scale showcases like Kalābhijña, where over a hundred students step into performance. “Instead of waiting to be included,” she says, “I’ve learned to initiate.”
The weight of lineage, the urge to fly
In a form like Kathak, independence is never simple. It is layered with lineage, discipline, and years of repetition. “It’s extremely important for a student to stay in an institute for a long time,” she says. “Dance is in the details.” The wrist. The angle of the body. The weight of a footfall. These are lived and refined over years.
For Sohini, the moment to leave came through a phone call. Her guru, Smt. Nirupama Rajendra, had just heard she’d been invited to perform a solo for ICCR. “I thought she would guide me through it,” Sohini says. Instead: “You are good enough. You cannot sit here with me any longer. You need to fly.”
Sohini remembers breaking down in a temple in Mangalore after that call. The performance that followed? “A disaster,” she laughs. But also a beginning. “I put together a band of young musicians and did it on my own. I learnt so much.”
“I didn’t quit on my dance even on days I wanted to.”
Freedom isn’t light
Building your own ecosystem sounds romantic. Sohini is careful to dismantle that illusion. “Yes, there is freedom,” she says. “But it’s not the easy kind.” With freedom comes multiplicity: you are the artist, the teacher, the organiser, the strategist, the one thinking about money, visibility, continuity.
“If something works, it’s because you made it work. If it doesn’t, you have to sit with that too.” What sustains it, she says, is structure — systems, consistency, clarity. Without that, freedom dissolves into chaos.
Her idea of success has also shifted. She recalls a story her mother told her about Alexander the Great — how he asked for his hands to be left outside his coffin, so the world could see that even a king leaves with nothing. “If I can be a good human being, stay grounded, treat people, nature, and animals with respect — that’s enough.”
“Instinct creates. Structure sustains.”
And somewhere between the two — quietly, consistently, with enough honesty to last — an ecosystem begins to take shape.
“You don’t always have to wait for opportunities,” she says. “Sometimes, just showing up — without expectation — is enough to begin.”
Sohini Karanth is a Kathak dancer, architect, and arts educator based in Bengaluru.