Born in Jaipur, Sharmila Sharma belongs to a family of artists. Her father is a folk musician and singer and her mother is a Kathak dancer, as well as a folk dancer.

Her first stage experience, at the age of three, coincided with her first dance contest : her performance captivated the audience and she won the first prize.

After an initial training in folk dances of Northern India as well as in Kathak from her mother Tara Sharma, Sharmila joined the renowned Kathak Kendra in New Delhi where she also learnt Hindustani classical singing and tabla.

Her talent blossomed under the tutelage of Pandit Rajendra Kumar Gangani (Jaipur style) and of famous Pandit Birju Maharaj (Lucknow style).

 Sharmila became a professional dancer at the age of fourteen, and she has been performing in international and national festivals ever since.

She established herself in Paris in 1993, where she started teaching Kathak and continues to do so.
She conducts workshops and gives Kathak recitals on a regular basis. A tireless dancer, she travels and performs, flitting between Europe and India, where her art is appreciated by connoisseurs and by the general audience.

In an art form which is technically rigorous with a lot of virtuosity, Sharmila is constantly on the look out to find new ways of developing her creativity in beauty, with her intelligence and delicate sensitivity.  Quoting her: “I like to paint new pictures and sculpt new figures in space with my dance”.
Sharmila cannot imagine her life without dance, an art that she considers as her “life partner” and the essence of her existence.