Rukmini Vijayakumar

Rukmini Vijayakumar is an Indian dancer specialized in Bharatanatyam. She has also acted in some Tamil movies. She was born in Bengaluru. She also does modeling and advertising work. Rukmini or Rukku (as per her pet name) started dancing since she was an eight-year-old. She studied Bharatanatyam under veteran dancers like Guru Padmini Rao, who is known for his Tanjore tradition dance form and under Guru Narmada who is awarded Sangeeth Natak Academy Award. She also studied under Guru Sundari Santhanam. Further, she practiced the Karans, which are ancient systems of movement under Guru Sundari Santhanam for many years. After school, she was initially torn between taking science and arts as her stream. Finally taking a break and thinking it over she chose what she loved most: dance.

Rukmini secured a Bachelors of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in dance from the Boston Conservatory in Ballet and Modern Dance. She studied four years for the degree. She also studied in other dance forms as jazz, tap, African and choreography in her time there. She gained the knowledge of Laban movement analysis, Alexander technique, and Pilates. She is now a certified Pilate instructor at the Power Pilates Institute. She has studied Human Anatomy and Exercise Physiology too. Even though being from classical dance origin, her modern dance and classical dance forms never interfere with each other. After this; Rukhmini studied acting at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. Whenever she returned home to India for the holidays, she was gaining lessons from director PrakashBelawadi. Rukhmini regards her mother as an inspiration. Her mother was the first female pilot from Karnataka, who also loved dancing but never pursued it professionally.

Rukhmini is presently pursuing a Fitness Training Certification course at the renowned UCLA. Also, she is undergoing a professional dancer's MFA program in Bharatanatyam under Padma Subrahmanyam at the Shastra University situated in Chennai. She practices Hatha Yoga. She formed her own dance company by the name RaadhaKalpa wherein she teaches and choreographs dances. She also experiments with Bharatnatyam and modern dance styles. She insists parents make children take dancing from a very young age. “Children start when they are 5, and I want them to do everything that I couldn’t do.”, Is what she believes in. Her knowledge about her art is limitless. She has kept herself aware and educated all the time. She has performed a lot at the US and Indian stages. Her acting skills have paid off in films too. Her debut film was Bommalattam, a suspense thriller, in 2008. Her character was of a small town dancer named Trishna.

She was cast alongside actors Nana Patekar, Kajal Aggarwal, and Arjun. The film was a commercial box office hit, and her performance was loved. In 2009, she was cast in a romantic film Ananda Tandavam. Her co-actors were Tamannah and Siddhartha Venugopal. Sadly, the film got negative reviews. Also, the film failed at the box office. Again she was cast alongside Venugopal in the movie Naan. But it faced trouble in production, and later Rukhmini turned down the role when it re-started its filming in 2010. A similar incident happened when she signed for another movie, Oru Naal Podhuma across actor Madhavan. She was in a Kannada movie by the name Bajirangi with co-actor Shivanna. She was nominated for Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress - Kannada. She had the pleasure of acting alongside Rajnikanth in Kochadaiyaanin 2014. She played Yamuna Devi, who is Rajnikanth’s character Rana’s sister. In 2015, she did a cameo in Amitabh Bachchan and Dhanush starrer film Shamithabh. In 2013, Rukhmini married to RohanMenon, an entrepreneur.

She has also endorsed for brands like World Space, Nalli, Himalaya Drug, AOL, Bangalore Central, Urban Yoga are, Pepsi's Mango Slice, Fair and Lovely etc. .