At 21, when most young people are tentatively sketching out their futures, Dhvani Kothari Dalmia had already decided to reimagine the ballet scene of India. Fresh out of training in Croatia and Hungary, the dancer returned home with one conviction: ballet didn’t yet belong to India in any formal way.

“What I realised,” recalls Kothari, now 27, “is that the true meaning of ballet, the right ballet education, didn’t exist here. My biggest dream was to make ballet inclusive, to really educate people on what it means. It’s not just a class — it’s a way of life.” That conviction became the seed of the National Ballet School of India (NBSI). In just six years, the school has expanded to 10 centres across Mumbai, training more than 200 students and staging grand productions at iconic venues. 
Then, in April, Kothari found herself in the last place she expected ballet to take her — Bhopal. When she thought about expanding NBSI, Kothari had her sights on India’s metros. “Bengaluru, Delhi — these cities were on my radar,” she says. Bhopal was not. That changed with a phone call from Ruchi Kapoor, executive director of RKDF University.