“How do we experience our beauty and humanity in every condition?” asks adrienne maree brown in her groundbreaking book Emergent Strategy. The incredible life that Anita Menon led seems to be nothing short of a perfect answer to this question. Anita’s creative curiosity, artistic explorations, and warmth imbued every aspect of her life and we are grateful to have this opportunity to celebrate the choreographer, artistic director, community leader, and genuine human she was.

Anita Menon was a world-class Bharatanatyam dancer, choreographer and Nattuvanar (cymbal player). Anita grew up in India and studied with the acclaimed Bharatanatyam guru, Chitra Visveswaran. She immigrated to the United States in 1994 and founded the Anjali School of Dance in Portland (ASOD) to bring the dance form to the next generation.

After more than 24 years in Portland, Anita and her husband, Satish, moved to Sacramento, Calif., a few years ago and then settled in Houston, Texas. Three years ago she received a diagnosis of Stage 4 gastrointestinal cancer that led to a difficult and courageous journey and ended in the early morning hours of June 3, 2025, in India. With her family and parents surrounding her, this beautiful artist took her last breaths, leaving a long line of students, collaborators, artists, and audiences in deep sadness and in awe of what she created during her precious and full life. 

In addition to regular classes for children and adults in greater Portland, the Anjali School of Dance brought Bharatanatyam to the larger public through annual school performances and arangetrams (the solo, full-length dance performance of a student that traditionally signals the dancer’s commitment to and grasp of the artform).

Thus far, Anita’s  journey might sound familiar to that of many South Asian immigrant dancers and dance teachers who moved to the U.S. for work, education or marriage. These dancers often open dance schools with a straightforward and focussed mission — to keep the artform alive in their own bodies, as well as to educate the youth around them who desperately need relationships with their culture. 

In the early 2000s Anita Menon began a trajectory in her artistic and community leadership roles that catapulted her into innovation, intense collaborations, and world-class premieres. This trajectory is what sets her apart from the journey described above. She steadily created an exceptional style that is distinct, meaningful and appealing to diverse audiences around the world.

Anita began this journey choreographing Western stories through Bharatanatyam in original solo pieces, including Red Riding Hood, Pegasus, and The Wizard of Oz. This continued into choreographies of strong South Asian women role models such as Jhansi Ki Rani, Meerabai, and Chitrangadha.

Her work evolved into large-scale musical theater productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2012) and an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile titled Murder on the Ganges (2014). Throughout this period, Anita also encouraged her dance students in their participation in productions created by fellow colleagues — a rare, if not frowned upon, practice in the Bharatanatyam world in the early 2000s.

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Deepening her mission to build cross-cultural collaborative artistic and thematic works, Northwest Children’s Theater mainstage productions including The Jungle Book, Chitra the Girl Prince, Tenali The Royal Trickster, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream emerged. Her productions were singular in their rigor and artistic excellence of her first and true love, Bharatanatyam, but they also seamlessly incorporated big dance numbers that included Indian folk dance forms, ballet, hiphop, jazz, and Bollywood. 

Anita was the first Asian American to receive the prestigious Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Performing Arts Fellowship (2014). As a Master Artist, she was awarded the Oregon Folklife Network Folk & Traditional Arts Apprenticeship (2016) and was a part of the Oregon Culture Keepers Roster. She served on the boards of the Northwest Children’s Theater, the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), and Theater for Young Audiences (TYA/USA).

Sarah Jane and Suba chose to co-author this piece celebrating and remembering Anita Menon because deep, authentic collaboration was at the heart of everything Anita did. There really is no way to remember Anita without sourcing and telling stories of so many diverse partners she wove together here in Portland. Her community-centered and compassionate approach exuded in her classroom, to stage rehearsals, to sharing meals. Her joyous demeanor was always genuine, and her laugh uncontrollably infectious. 

Suba recalls sending an email to Anita in August of 2008, introducing herself as a new Bharatanatyam choreographer/teacher in Portland and asking for help finding singers and musicians for an upcoming performance. Within three hours a phone call arrived from Anita, and four days later a lunch date was fixed and extensive connections to musicians and vocalists in the community were established.

Over the next six years, Anita immerses in many collaborations with Suba, generously offering select students to learn and perform in Suba’s original creations across the Pacific Northwest and inviting Suba to collaboratively choreograph thematic pieces for large community events. Their artistic collaborative friendship blossomed into a personal one of community-centered strategic work around bringing more public understanding of the expansiveness that Bharatanatyam is as a dance and story-telling medium. 

Sarah Jane’s journey with Anita began with the co-creation of The Jungle Book at Norhwest Cildren’s Theatre in 2015. The show took two years to develop and set the tone for more than a decade of artistic collaboration, which saw the pair producing five award-winning productions, working with dozens of artists and traveling the country to make presentations about their intracultural process and partnership. All the while, their friendship deepened and became as much a part of their story as the pieces they worked on.

Anita’s choreography was complex, joyful and extraordinary. She ran a tight ship in rehearsals, blending her classical training with a passion for storytelling. The room was consistently filled with laughter, sweat, and beauty. Anita’s commitment to artistic excellence and relentless drive for experimentation and exploration pushed Sarah Jane to expand her own understanding of what was possible for herself, the company she led, and the community they were both a part of.  

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The threads of collaboration, artistic rigor and excellence, purposeful creative risk-taking, and building community processes all along the way are apparent in almost all of our experiences with Anita. When we reached out to the larger community, those themes reverberated through all the remarks and recollections. We were overwhelmed by the generosity and vulnerability of every single person who responded to our call for thoughts, but that again reflects how Anita Menon spread genuine goodness across all the realms that she moved through. 

Meera Kanagal, a Bharatanatyam dancer who had left her passion for the artform “on the backburner as life progressed,” was encouraged by her friends to approach Anita for dance opportunities in 2008. Meera was immediately struck by Anita’s candor with her students in class. In a world where teachers tend to lean into harshness and feeding off of students’ unhealthy competitive culture, Meera encountered a different kind of teacher — someone who “offered constructive criticism while sounding like she was cuddling her fledgling dance students. I looked up to her from that first moment and genuinely started enjoying dance again.”

Over the years, Meera became an assistant teacher, choreographer, lighting designer, and an integral part of ASOD as a staff member. “Anita put the air under my wings of choreography,” she says. “She was such a powerful artist and so comfortable in her own skin that she did not fear giving all the support for another person to fly. Every production, arangetram, class, and choreography — really every moment of associating with Anita — opened my eyes wider as she proved time and time again that through intergenerational respect and age-appropriate empowerment we can reach heights we couldn’t imagine for ourselves.“

Avantika Shankar concurs: “She gave me my first opportunity to be a professional playwright, she taught me how beautiful creative collaboration can be, she inspired me to be better just by believing in me. I hope everyone in this world finds a mentor, a guru as creative, kind and courageous as Anita.”

Archana Mungara, a composer and vocalist, notes that Anita was instrumental in inspiring her “to create original compositions to accompany the choreography for many projects. Anita was a wildly creative and grounded artist who respected the roots of each artform she touched or collaborated with. Her uniqueness was to integrate seamlessly without compromising or diluting the heart and soul of any story or artform.”

Poorna Sridharan, a staff teacher at ASOD, speaks to how Anita consistently “demonstrated exceptional leadership — welcoming new talent, fostering creativity, and thoughtfully connecting Indian classical dance with global narratives. Anita’s dedication, organizational excellence, and talent for character visualization helped performers grow into their roles with depth and authenticity.”

Rody Ortega, composer and sound designer, recalls “collaborating on many cross-cultural projects over the years, united by her passion for blending the sounds of Indian and Western classical music. One of the last pieces we worked on together was for her dance company. She was always interested in fusing Western music, the Sonatas of Beethoven or Mozart with Indian dance — an idea that captured everything she stood for: innovation, unity, and the beauty of cultural exchange.”

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Helen Daltoso, longtime Director of Grants (2003- 24) at the Regional Arts and Culture Council, recalls that “as a RACC Board member, Anita spoke when she had something important to say, not to hear herself speak. … She ALWAYS used her position to give voice to the issues facing the hundreds of artists and entrepreneurs RACC served. She is one of a handful of board members over the years who empowered me to speak openly and honestly about our grant-making and our needs as employees. On occasion, when staff input was not solicited or comments were not taken seriously, Anita went out of her way to follow up and strategize about what more she could do to move needed change through the organization.” 

In the last three years, as Anita battled her illness, her grit and compassion never faded. Meera speaks of reaching out to Anita as she learned of a close family member dealing with cancer. Anita unhesitatingly provided love, guidance, and motivation, even as she was in the midst of her own medical journey. “In the last few years,” Daltoso says, “Anita would often come to mind when I was struggling to find my footing or call up my resolve in a tough situation. In one of the last texts we exchanged she told me the challenge is to dig deep for strength to face each day while being grateful for it all. That pretty much sums up Anita for me — a courageous and fearless woman who was grateful to have the opportunity to do the really hard work it takes to be an artist in this world.”

So many of us will miss the beautiful Anita Menon, the artist, friend, collaborator, and fierce supporter of all that is good. Everything that Anita did and accomplished had a clear through-line of leaving the world a more artistic and culturally rich place for the next generation. So, it seems only fitting that the last words are reserved for her two children, Alisha and Avish.

Together they say, “The performing arts was integrated so deeply in Mom’s life that we grew up around it every day and, having trained with her, participated in most of her productions as well. Being a part of these productions meant more than just sharing our stories with the audience, it meant watching her bring her visions to life through creativity and instincts shaped by decades of training and life experience. She truly was in her element while teaching, directing and choreographing. 

“Anyone witnessing this could see Mom was fulfilling her divine purpose. As we engaged with audiences after the performances, we could see how her shows left audiences stunned, in awe, and eager for more. She pioneered a new approach to performing arts, blending the best of the Eastern and Western storytelling together to create grand visuals with mesmerizing choreography. Her legacy lives on through everyone who was moved by, inspired by, or shaped by her art.”