Despite devoting most of her adult life to Abhinaya Dance Company—a South Indian dance troupe now marking its 45th anniversary—Mythili Kumar didn’t find it easy to forge a career in the arts.

She came from a family that pushed high academic achievement with an emphasis on the sciences. Growing up in Mumbai, New Delhi and Hyderabad, she received a master’s degree in food and nutrition before coming to America. Once here, she got a second master’s at UC Davis and a job at Stanford University.

But she also studied dance, music and art during her childhood in South India, starting at the age of eight. “Learning an art form was really important for our communities. In my mother’s old town in South India, at 5:30 in the morning you could hear children practicing their scales.”

Despite the pre

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