Krishna Zivraj-Nair is a Bharatanatyam artist, teacher and choreographer. She is the artistic director of multi-award winning Sanskruti, Cambridge, UK., which includes a performing arts school and the professional dance company, Sanskruti Dance. The company is supported by Arts Council England to create new dance work for families. She is trained in the classical dance form of Bharatanatyam and performs solo classical Bharatanatyam. Her Guru is Natya Ratna Guru. Padma Murali, founder of Padmalaya Dance Foundation, Bangalore, India. Krishna is the recipient of the Nritya Ratna award in India and the Uttkarsh runner’s up award from Akademi, UK. Krishna is also one of the eight recipients of the prestigious One Dance Teaching Mentoring programme in 2017, given to those identified as the future industry leaders.

Krishna over the years, has trained over 500 students, given several performances locally and internationally, and engaged an audience over 10,000 people. Krishna’s students have performed at national level competitions, such as U. Dance Festivals, Navadal, ISTD Bursary Awards, Misrana, Love Dance Live competitions, among others. Krishna’s students have made it to U.Dance semi-finals 2019 and 2025 and her student, Linnea, is also the winner of the coveted national ISTD Bursary Awards 2018. As Linnea’s teacher, Krishna has also received the ISTD Bursary Award for 2018 for further professional development in recognition of outstanding teaching. Krishna’s teaching focusses on developing technique with a postive mindset, focus, paying attention to detail and overall wellbeing of her students. She has completed her Licentiate qualification in Bharatanatyam by the ISTD. A few of her students have toured professionally around the country with Sanskruti Dance Company and other national dance companies.

In many ways the ability to think critically, experiment, and analyse, are skills that Krishna longs to explore while creating new work. Her plans for the future are to find methods to grow as a dance artist, create new thought-provoking work that reaches a wide audience, give performances as well as teaching dance.

Formally trained as a research scientist with a PhD in Neuroscience, Krishna was working as a postdoctoral research scientist at University of Cambridge  until the birth of her first child in 2010. She lives with her husband Amit Nair, two children- Sia and Arjun, and a six-year old cocker spaniel called Dobby. Krishna is also a breast cancer survivor and is ever grateful to the Oncology Department at Addenbrooke’s Hospital for treating her stage 2 breast cancer from 2018-2019. The additional experience of undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and two surgeries in a span of 14 months has made Krishna more resiliant than ever. With the relapse of the cancer in early 2024 (metastatic breast cancer in the bones), Krishna is back with chemotherapy (oral chemo treatment) for life and her new mantra is to live well with her cancer!

Awards and Achievements

• Appointed as member of Board of Trustees for British Albanian Arts Association 2024-present
• Selected for British Library’s Accelerator programme “Get ready for Business Growth” 2024
• Received Stobb’s New Ideas Award by Cambridge Junction for Magical Honey 2021-2022
• Selected for Mercury Creatives Mentoring programme 2021-2022
• Received Akademi seed commission during Covid to create Magical Honey 2020
• ISTD Bursary Award 2018 in recognition for outstanding teaching
• Grants for Arts Award by Arts Council England 2017-present
• Winner of One Dance UK’s dance teacher mentoring programme 2017-2018
• Uttkarsh Runner-Up Commission by Akademi 2015-2016
• Nritya Ratna Award by Government of Odisha, India, 2016
• ISTD Member since 2016
• Selected teacher by CAT Yuva Gati 2015-2016 for mentoring by Anusha Subramanyam, leader of the national CAT programme in Bharatanatyam