Lakshmi Bharadwaj as Lata

"Do you want to stop me from dancing? You can't. But do you want to?"

There's a Lata in many of us. In Dance Like a Man, Lata is the legacy of the generation before her, but she also represents the modern world. She does her best at what she believes is the right thing for her to do. She works hard to be a good daughter and a good partner. She has a profoundly sincere way of experiencing life. Her life is a mixture of things. There is dance, a passion that is both inherited and inherently hers. And then there is love, something that she has discovered for herself. There is also her family – her overbearing parents with their own idiosyncrasies. 

Lata is independent, self-assured and talented. She represents so much that is good and human about us – the need to be accepted and loved, the need to grow in our art, to aspire to be the best version of ourselves and to be there for our family. 

I play Lata in Dance Like A Man. As a daughter myself, I can connect with Lata's character at so many levels. It's a character that speaks to me. Lata's ambition, her hope and her dreams are so beautiful that it's an experience in itself to both understand and express them. I'm truly privileged to be playing Lata, and am excited to be able to make her come alive on stage. 

- Lakshmi Bharadwaj