Double Cochlear Implant Recipient Stuns in Bharathanatyam Arangetram

NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT

Hartford CT, June 27, 2025: In a world-first feat of art meeting technology, 17-year-old Nivrritii Mahesh (Nivi), a bilateral cochlear implant recipient, took to the stage for her Bharathanatyam arangetram at the Theater of Performing Arts in Hartford on June 14, 2025, defying the odds and redefining what it means to truly listen and express through dance.

Nivi, daughter and disciple of Aishwarya Chakravarthy, founder of Natyakshetram, a Bharathanatyam dance school based in Connecticut, USA, began dancing at a young age, initially driven by curiosity. Over the years, under her mother’s thoughtful guidance and nurturing, she blossomed into a confident and expressive dancer.

Born profoundly deaf, Nivi wears bilateral cochlear implants. Cochlear implants are devices that bypass damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Like the illustration below, a cochlear implant consists of:

• An external processor and microphone, which captures external sound
• An internal receiver, implanted beneath the skin, which transmits the sound
• An electrode array implanted in the cochlea, which transmits electrical signals to the auditory nerve

This technology provides access to sound, but not the way most of us are used to it. For cochlear implant users, music remains the most significant challenge: tones blend, rhythms sound flat, and melodies become lost. To hear speech is an accomplishment in itself. To handle layered Indian classical music with live vocals, mridangam (drums), nattuvangam (cymbals), veena (a traditional indian instrument), and flute is an Everest that few are ready to tackle. Nivrritii tackled it.

To overcome many of these challenges, her team which consisted of her teacher for the deaf (Mrs. Nancy Simison), educational audiologist (Dr. Diana Gonzales) and sound engineer (Mr. Nick Powell) devised an unprecedented solution in the form using a DM System that channeled two separate sets of audio inputs directly into her processors through bluetooth connectivity.

• One channel transmitted the main vocals, some aspects of the mridangam (Nivi was struggling to distinguish between the base tone and high tone of the mridangam, so she had to rely mostly on cues from her mother and some word cues from the main vocalist,) and amplified the nattuvangam. 
• The other was a dedicated line of communication from her mother, giving her real-time cues throughout the performance so she was able to keep up with the beats which she otherwise would not have heard. This channel was exclusively only between Nivi and her mom, and the audience did not hear this in the house.

During the jathi sequences, where the teacher’s voice needed to be audible to the audience, an added layer of challenge arose for Nivi. Unable to fully follow the sollu kattu due to her hearing limitations, she had to depend entirely on muscle memory built over months of practice, along with visual cues from her mother. To support her, a camera was placed directly in front of her mother so that a live video feed could stream to a confidence monitor positioned in Nivi’s line of sight. This allowed her to lip-read and stay visually connected to cues she would otherwise miss through sound alone, enabling her to stay in sync

The result of all this? A breathtaking performance that earned a standing ovation from the audience purely to celebrate a small but mighty team of individuals who did everything it took to celebrate this momentous occasion! 

Instead of gifts, Nivrritii and her family chose to raise money for deaf students in India. Through her arangetram, so far they’ve raised over $13,000 in support of AIM for Seva, towards assistive devices, education, and empowerment of hearing impaired students in their chatralayas.

“Limits are always invitations to invent,” notes her mother, also her teacher and fiercest cheerleader. “We did not wait for the world to catch up. We constructed the bridge ourselves.”

Nivrritii’s journey is not just about dance. It is a story of daring to dream beyond limitations. As Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” Through grit, grace, and ground-breaking work, Nivi has turned her biggest challenge into her greatest triumph.

Let her dance be a reminder to all that passion, when paired with persistence and innovation, can truly move mountains. And hearts.

Cover photo: Nivrritii with her mother Aishwarya and Kalaimamani Madurai R Muralidharan, who provided exceptional guidance to both throughout the process.