Rebel Ranis is reclaiming mythological women beyond moral binaries on the Indian stage
Women from our ancient texts are often remembered through labels: devoted wife, villainous queen, saint, victim. But what happens when those labels are stripped away? In Rebel Ranis by Keelaka Dance Company, founder and dancer Aneesha Grover revisits iconic figures from mythology, literature and spiritual history through a more nuanced lens.
On an Indian stage alive with Tamil jazz and classical dance, mythological heroines shed saint–sinner labels to reclaim desire, rage, agency and spiritual power
Can you tell us about Rebel Ranis and the journey from ideation to execution?
I was inspired by Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues when I was in college and it stayed with me as an example of how women’s voices could be placed at the centre of a theatrical narrative.
As I began looking at women from our own scriptures and history, I became increasingly interested in how often they are placed within very clear moral binaries — the virtuous woman, the transgressive woman, the devoted woman, the dangerous woman. And yet, these are texts largely written and interpreted by men. I wanted to ask: what happens when we look at these women with the same nuance, contradictions and layers that we so readily afford their male counterparts? The aim was never to modernise these women or make them conform to a contemporary feminist narrative. It was to allow them to remain complicated — capable of desire, rage, vulnerability, power and contradiction.
Rebel Ranis brings together women from mythology and spiritual history. How did you maintain the balance between exploring the narratives and honouring who they are?
For me, the starting point was always respect for the source material. I didn’t want to appropriate these women’s stories to make a contemporary point; I wanted to understand the worlds they came from, the texts they belonged to, and the many interpretations that have existed around them.
At the same time, I believe these women deserve to be more than the roles they have been assigned over centuries. So the balance came from holding both things together — honouring the scripture and history while allowing ourselves to look beneath the prescribed narrative and ask what else might be there.
The production reimagines characters like Sita, Draupadi, Kaikeyi and Karaikal Ammaiyar. What surprised you most about these women during the rehearsal process?
The most surprising thing was realising that while the narratives may be fixed, the gaze through which we see them doesn’t have to be. When you shift the gaze from a traditionally male one to a female one, the same actions and reactions can acquire completely different motivations and meanings.
Take Kaikeyi, for instance. Instead of remembering her as the woman who demanded Rama’s exile, our exploration looks at her as a woman who had a position, agency and a life in the world.
With Sita, I looked beyond the familiar Ramayana through the Adbhuta Ramayana. There, she becomes the one who defeats the 1,000 headed Ravana. We began asking: is she simply fighting a demon, or is this also a woman confronting a society that had subjected her to the Agni Pariksha?
Karaikal Ammaiyar offered another fascinating shift. She is often remembered as the woman who left her home and renounced her beauty to become an ascetic. But we asked: what if losing her beauty was not a punishment or a rejection of the feminine, but a conscious choice to free herself from society’s standards?
And Draupadi perhaps underwent the biggest transformation for us. We didn’t want to see her only as the victim of the Mahabharata. We began to see her as its conscience — the woman whose rage and refusal to accept injustice expose the moral failures of everyonearound her.
Was there a particular character that resonated with you personally?
I think Kaikeyi’s story resonated with me most personally. After I gave birth to my son during Covid, there was a period when I was out of the workforce and at home. During those long nights, I would find myself dreaming about when I could work, leave the house, and feel like myself again. It was a very real experience of postpartum blues — that strange tension between loving your child deeply and simultaneously feeling that a part of your own identity has disappeared.
Karaikal Ammaiyar resonated with me in a different but equally personal way. Her choice to relinquish her beauty made me wonder whether it could be read not as a rejection of herself, but as a radical rejection of society’s expectations of how a woman should look and exist.
How does performing alongside live musicians shape the energy of the show?
It is phenomenal to perform alongside Harini Iyer on live vocals. Bringing her into the production as Draupadi completely changes the landscape of the classical dance musical as we know it.
Music is not simply an accompaniment in Rebel Ranis — it is an active storyteller. Each scene takes the audience through a different journey of rasa, and the live Tamil Jazz, alongside the brilliant soundtrack produced by MadStarBase featuring Carnatic legend OS Arun, creates a constantly shifting emotional landscape.The musicians bring an unpredictability and energy to every performance. Their live presence allows the dancers to respond in the moment, and that exchange makes each show feel alive and slightly different.