Ade Suharto cover image
© Leyla Stevens

Ade Suharto

  • Fellow 2021
  • Dancer and choreographer from Australia
  • Cooperating partner: Padmini Chettur (Chennai, India)

Ade Suharto
Padmini Chettur



Ade Suharto is an Australian-born dancer and choreographer of Indonesian heritage. Her education, research and practice follows the spirit of Chandralekha, the Indian modernist choreographer who radicalized the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam, who once said “there is no completion to the learning.” Ade is interested in the investigation of contemporaneity in the Asia Pacific from local forms, and over the past two decades has taken time and space in her practice for this. Ade’s choreographic work has been presented in Australia, Indonesia, Belgium and the UK.

For her digital fellowship Ade will cooperate with Padmini Chettur, a choreographer and performer resident in Chennai, India, who began her career in contemporary dance with Chandralekha. Within this framework, Ade and Padmini are going to enter a multi-modal exchange based on an aligned politic and sensibility around a non-colonized way of thinking. Throughout frequent exchange over a period of 12 months, Ade and Padmini will observe their research and rehearsal process, share insights on movement investigations, contextualize their environment and unpack their individual recent works as case studies.

Ade's report


„Ade Suharto is a mid-career artist who eloquently articulates her position in the space of Asia-Pacific contemporaneity. She already has acquired wide knowledge and skills from diverse non-Western forms and philosophy, and has a strong opinion about the exclusion of such practices in the standard curriculum of dance training. Hence, for this fellowship, she has chosen a partner (Padmini Chettur) who is equally critical about the conservatism of classical Asian forms as well as dominance of Western practices. Moreover, the partnership of Ade and Chettur is based on equality, respect and deep curiosity about each other’s thinking and practices. It will be an intense one-to-one process and not a generic skill-training course. We are very excited about witnessing the result of this partnership.“
- Jury Statement