“Mummy named me Tamanna. When I was born she saw me as her dream, she desired to see me dancing on the stage just as she did. I was the wish she wants to turn into reality”, says Tamanna when I asked her about how her Bharatnatyam journey began. She was just 4 years old when she started, now 34, she has been dancing for 30 years.
Tamanna resides in a plus-size body, but that doesn’t stop her from excelling her moves. She is not just a dancer, Tamanna is also a Bharatnatyam teacher who started teaching when she was just 14. She is a sight for sore eyes, her inside goddess shines through when she loses herself as she sways in the passion of dance. Tamanna loves her dance, Tamanna loves herself to be able to do everything she does. With every move, her face emotes and entices her audience into feeling the emotions of the act, the music, the moment.
Tamanna just can’t stop thanking her mother, her guru, Poonamtai Murdeshwar, who has trained her to this level. Tamanna was always a fat kid. She had also been subjected to body-shaming and had people giving her judgemental looks. But her mother never lost faith in her, never nagged her to lose weight, and always supported her and moulded into this fantastic, ‘badass’ woman Tamanna is today.