Smt. Sucheta Chapekar (born 1948) is acclaimed as one of the finest Bharatnatyam exponents in India. She was trained in the art form by stalwarts such as Acharya Parvatikumar of Bombay and Guru K.P.Kittappa of Tanjore. She has given innumerable solo performances all over India and abroad and has the distinction of performing in the famous Savai Gandharva Festival thrice in the years 1967, 1992 and 2002. She has given many performances in foreign countries as well. During an active career life-span of more than forty years she is not only a dancer, but also a teacher, researcher and choreographer. She founded the “Kalavardhini Charitable Trust” in 1988, a dance training institute.
As a teacher, she encourages creativity among students and is of the opinion that teaching should be a dialogue rather than a discourse. As a researcher, she made a valuable contribution to Bharatanatyam repertoire by unearthing some rare Marathi compositions of the Tanjore Maratha rulers (17th to 19th century). In her creation called Nritya Ganga, she blended Bharatnatyam and Hindustani Classical music. Over the years, this unique experiment matured into a dance style of its own individual kind.
As an accomplished choreographer, she has to her credit more than 75 compositions in this new creative style. She won the National Award of Sangeet Natak Academy, New Delhi, 2007, for rare contribution & excellence in Bharatnatyam, among many others.