Imagine waking up in the wee hours of the morning on weekends just to travel 3 hours to Kuala Lumpur to learn Odissi. That was Sivagami Selvarajan’s reality since she was 4 years old. Her mother was determined to give her the best dance education and the duo would travel from Sitiawan, Perak to learn from the revered Malaysian dance guru, Datuk Ramli Ibrahim.

Sivagami Selvarajan | Photo By Barathan Amuthan

Sivagami has an illustrious dance career, one that has taken her to countries such as India and the United States of America to perform. In 2018, she danced to Manavyalakinchara (Mist of Capricorn) on stage with popular progressive Carnatic rock band, Agam, when they performed in Malaysia. Currently, Sivagami is pursuing a Masters Degree in Dance at Universiti Malaya.

Sivagami has amassed a following of over 75,000 people on Instagram and is always working on creative projects with talents from Malaysia and India. She runs an Instagram page dedicated to empowerment of women through sarees called #KeepCalmAndSareeOn . The page received much deserved global attention that she was invited by popular South Indian actress, Samantha Ruth Akkineni, to attend a saree forum in India.

WATCH our chat with Sivagami to learn about her love for sarees and dance and how she sails through the unforgiving social media landscape effortlessly.