Dancer and choreographer Chandralekha (1928–2006) harnessed tension, slowness, elasticity and the breath cycle as means of muscular and cosmic time-keeping. Trained in Bharatanatyam, India, during the 1950s, she eventually turned away from neoclassical dance to conceive an avant-garde course of making and living that was opposed to the nationalist bias, disciplinary regimes and rigid class hierarchies imposed on hereditary dance communities. A well-known cultural figure, Chandralekha wrote poetry, took up screen printing, worked in visual design and grew to be a vital member of the South Asian women’s movement. Beginning in the 1980s in Chennai (then Madras), under the shade of Neem trees and upon a mud stage, she and her collaborators brought together Bharatanatyam, yoga, the semiclassical Indian dance Chhau and martial arts, such as Kalari, in a radical confluence. The group drew knowledge from tantric philosophy, astrophysics, femme principles of energy (Shakti), environmentalism, theosophy and feminist storytelling.