Dancing Through Life
- Lauren Noble
- Apr 14
- 10 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Spotlight on Sharmila Kamte by Lauren Noble
Whether in the studios or on the stages of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, or the Middle East, Sharmila Kamte seems to have always danced through life to a rhythm only she can hear. There have been moments of kinetic alignment throughout the expansive choreography of her life: sometimes because she has been drawn into the orbit of others, and sometimes because others have been drawn into hers. It is the intensity of her passion and purpose that strikes me immediately as something that has been sustained throughout her life because she knows no other way than this. Indeed, scheduling a #collabinconvo with Sharmila is quite an experience in finding time with a creative force who is just never not on the go! Fortunately we find a moment together and she sits down with me at Mawaheb Café, immediately reminding herself out aloud that she must leave at a quarter-to-two to ensure she makes it across town to teach her next class. I laugh at her use of the fifteen minute interval because it's something I do quite often now too, especially during the busy season of productions, performances, events and exams. I giggle nervously as we begin and ask her not to judge me as I explain to her that even though we had never officially met until today, I did catch sight of her once during the week leading up to our first festival win with Checkmate at The Theatre at Mall of the Emirates. I was about to get the grand tour of the full theatre space when a whirlwind of a woman emerged inside the lobby carrying a pile of documents and a serious she-knows-what's-up vibe, chatted to the lady at reception, smiled a smile that seemed to light up her entire being, and disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared in the first place.
"Who was that?!" I remember asking my tour guide, a little awestruck. "Sharmila. She runs one of the most successful dance studios in this region. They've been in Dubai forever, and their showcase is always incredible."
I started following Sharmila Dance on Instagram later that day, and have loved every update since. It feels a little surreal for me to be sitting across from her but after a hello which had Sharmila embracing me like she's known me forever, I feel like I'm sitting down with an old friend instead of a new one. I love the ease of conversations that start like this, so I dive right in with my questions...
Sharmila's dance story begins at home, surrounded by a family of adventurous athletes and passionate personalities. Her parents divorced when she was very young and she lived with her mother in Delhi until she was seven years old, joining her older brother at a boarding school which was an entire domestic flight, train ride and bus drive away from their childhood home. Sharmila credits this time in her life as the time where she learned she was already fiercely independent. Her boarding school life also taught her to be competitive through sport instead of academics. When her brother graduated and she moved back to her childhood home, Sharmila was already competing at a national level for athletics but it was around this time that she also discovered a ballet school in her area. She was a teenager when she began training at the Anna Pavlova Dance School in Delhi and suddenly dance recitals and competitions were also thrown into her extracurricular activities. When a teacher asked what was next for Sharmila, her father flew her out to Mumbai for an opportunity that would become a watershed moment in her life.
My father just happened to know the best choreographer in India at that time. He asked him to judge whether it was worth spending the money on my training. I had no formal training but I could dance because I had a lot of rhythm and I was flexible. That was the day that Shiamak Davar told my father it would be a mistake not to place me in a reputable dance school.
Sharmila completed her GCSEs, enrolled in The Legat School of Classical Ballet in Tunbridge Wells where she trained for three years by day and achieved her A-levels by night. During her time in Kent, she immersed herself in the vast world of ballet, contemporary, jazz, and theatre, absorbing every form with an eagerness that hinted at her career to come. A few years later she auditioned for Cats, got in... and did not even end up performing because she moved back to India! Since then, she has choreographed and danced and taught around the world with each stint adding a depth and breadth to her artistic vocabulary. And fortunately for this region, her travels landed her in Dubai in the late 1990s where a city was still discovering its artistic pulse. She started teaching at Jumeirah Beach Club, and it didn’t take long to realise that the community was starting to steer itself towards a yearning for a strategic, structured space for dance.
Cue the launch of Sharmila Dance Center in Dubai! What began with a class of just four students grew has flourished into one of the most recognised dance institutions within the UAE. This studio, as an extension of its founder, refuses simplified categorisation of dancers based on skill, body type, experience or even prior training. Sharmila and her talented instructors choose to consciously train dancers in multiple styles and genres within the framework of the school - from ballet to hip-hop, tap to contemporary, even dance as fitness. I am captivated by Sharmila speaking about why it was so significant to curate a space where dancers discover themselves through their own development.
It isn't always about being the best dancer in a room, Lauren. It's about the dancer who has enough passion to fully commit to the journey, to go through what they need to go through, to really see the results. This doesn't happen overnight.
I think back to how many times my theatre students would ask whether talent is enough to get someone far in the theatre industry. My response will never change. Talent can open doors. Effort, determination and the way you make people feel when they work alongside you will keep the right doors open and ensure that the wrong doors remain locked, no matter how much you try to force them to open. It makes me smile as I notice Sharmila surreptitiously checking the time. This founder is fiercely dedicated to showing up for her dancers as dancers, but also as creatives who may choose a career path which will see them one day stepping into her industry as professional practitioners. I acknowledge wholeheartedly that there are droves of talented teachers and inspiring instructors throughout the UAE and - because of this - our educational landscape for the performing arts feels extremely secure. I have met some phenomenally gifted educators in the UAE who are able to dig down into a series of skills and refine them seemingly effortlessly for their students, teaching these young minds how to harness this and their creativity into a solid foundation for any creative career. I have also seen, however, that there is a generational gap currently working against this system of arts education where engaging young creatives on the ethics and etiquette required to build a thriving performing arts community is somehow less necessary to teach or even model than our craft itself. This region really does need more foundational frameworks to function like those embedded in the very core of Sharmila Dance Center. Where technique and talent, skills and styles are refined alongside the grit and gravitas, the inner strength and inner voice, the ethos and etiquette.
The annual Sharmila Dance Extravaganza has become a fixture in Dubai’s cultural calendar, not just for its scale or spectacle, but for its spirit. Each performance is a celebration of movement, discipline, resilience and heart. It is a collective exhale after months of rehearsals, a vibrant declaration that dance belongs here in the UAE... and that it belongs to everyone. Sharmila tells me that this showcase is the annual moment of revelation and reflection for her, her teachers, and the friends and families of each student who had the courage to believe in themselves and their evolution as dancers over the course of the last year. It makes me think of the tangential detour we went on earlier in this #collabinconvo interview when Sharmila was describing what it was like to be working as an artist in Dubai in the 90s. I truly could not imagine it, and was very curious! In the early days, Sharmila was dancing solo in every sense of the word. She was one of very few individuals in Dubai speaking the language of professional dance at a time when few were willing or able to listen.
“People had very little respect for dance as a performance art when I first moved here." She recalls the repetitive refrain of people asking her what she was doing? "Ballet!" she would say. "Belly?" they would ask. A pause would inevitably follow until: "What else do you do?"
Instead of retreating during these many, many encounters, Sharmila stood her ground and eventually dug her heels in. She taught. She choreographed. She built. And little by little, the perceptions shifted. Not because she asked for approval, but because she kept showing up and doing the work without it. When I asked her earlier to describe her teaching style she admitted that her students and colleagues will readily admit that she is hard on everyone, including - or perhaps especially - herself. She does not believe that pretence in the performing arts is good for anyone and will always aim to ground her harder stance in truth and transparency. There is no softening of standards and Sharmila believes that what emerges from that directness is actually something deeply compassionate. No falsified offerings. No fake impressions. And therefore always a chance to do it differently next time.
It should come as no surprise that at some point during this journey, Sharmila Kamte began contemplating what an education like the one she was providing her dancers might offer when it aligned with opportunities in entertainment. Drawing on her expertise across the spectrum of dance as well as her profound understanding of Middle Eastern culture and customs having lived here for decades, Sharmila set about crafting events and curating entertainment that resonates both locally and internationally. This aspect of her diverse career has seen Sharmila choreographing some of the most prestigious events in the region, including the iconic Dubai World Cup, Dubai Shopping Festival, and even international forums such as Education Without Borders. The number of renowned brands that have sought out Sharmila and entrusted her with embodying their identity through dance is quite astonishing. Names like Tiffany & Co, L’Oreal, Samsung, Skechers, Calvin Klein and Harper's Bazaar. Oh, and don't even get me started on on how much street cred Sharmila gets with me when she casually name drops gigs with the likes of Mika, Kelly Rowland and Lionel Richie! What a world she lives in...
When I ask what lies ahead for her and her dancers, she doesn’t hesitate. “I have a deep desire to see the educational landscape change enough that you do not have to leave this place to study further. It's a long stretch, but it's there in the back of my mind at all times.” She also dreams of reaching dancers in parts of the world where you usually have to travel to a big city to take a dance class. Since her entire dance academy survived through the chaos of the pandemic a few years ago, Sharmila has shifted her thinking to consider those who live in rural and outlying areas but have access to the internet. “That’s one of my next projects,” she says with a quiet conviction. I ask what's the very next event on the horizon and her eyes light up when she invites me to attend the Sharmila Dance Extravaganza with some of my arts journalism students. Honestly, I cannot wait because dance journalism is where this all started for me and I am so excited to be in a position to teach this skill to others through such an iconic event in the arts and culture calendar of the UAE.
I marvel at the journey I have gone on with Sharmila Kamte as I consider how best to close my #collabinconvo article. I am acutely aware that I could sit for another few hours and barely scratch the surface of the ebbs and flows, the ins and outs, of this phenomenal person. And yet, despite all of that, I think that I understand much more of the essence of Sharmila Kamte’s legacy than I did when we first sat down together. She did not simply dance through life to a rhythm of her own making. She consciously invited and continues to invite others to find their rhythm alongside her. Her journey reminds me that the most powerful performances often begin quite far from the first spotlight, in quiet moments of persistence, in classrooms with just four students, in conversations where someone dares to dream about the power and potential of dance in all its forms. Dubai is a city that is constantly rewriting itself, and Sharmila continues to show up in every iteration of the story, choreographing her solo with passion and purpose. Not for the attention, the applause, the admiration... but because “I just bloody love what I do!”
Make sure to give Sharmila Kamte a follow on Instagram here and then head over to Sharmila Dance Center here. For more information, please visit the Sharmila Dance Center official website.
© Lauren Noble for Collab Company | 2025
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