Fátima Montero is an Odissi dancer as well as researcher. She is graduated in History (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Master Degree in Archaeology (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) and holds an “Expert” degree in Indian and Iranian studies (Experto Universitario en India e Irán, Universidad de Salamanca).
After studying different dance styles since childhood, she started learning Indian classical dances in 2007, initially Odissi and Kathak, adding up Bharatanatyam a few years later. She continued her training briefly in Delhi, India, under Kalyani Behera (Odissi) and Dakshina Vaidyanathan (Bharatanatyam), and from 2014 she becomes a student of Odissi main exponent, Guru Smt. Sujata Mohapatra. In 2014-2015 she extended her training thanks to the Indian Council for Cultural Relations scholarship program, in Srjan Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra Odissi Nrityabasa, Bhubaneswar, India. She continues her training nowadays under the guidance of Guru Lingaraja Swain, Prasanta Kumar and Sonali Mishra.
Fátima has worked on promoting Indian culture in Spain since 2011, organizing classes, seminars and programs for renowned artists, and she is founder member of Ekadâ, a collaborative project to promote Indian dance and culture in Spain. She teaches regularly Odissi dance as well as theory classes on Indian arts and history, and collaborates as a writer in Global Rasika, a digital platform dedicated to foster critical thinking and discourse in the field of Odissi. She has conducted lecture demonstrations on Indian dance and literature (Semana de las Letras, Universidad Complutense de Madrid), on Odissi dance (Ateneo de Madrid) and theory lectures on Indian dance (II Biennial Conference of the Spanish Association for Interdisciplinary India Studies, Universidad de La Laguna).
She regularly teaches and performs in Spain, organizes workshops and classes for Ekadâ , and collaborates with Uthana, association based in Nantes, France, to promote Indian music and dance.
