The new confidence is not so much about technique or repertoire, it is about dancing well. Navtej has brought into this form an aura of other worldliness. . . [he] shows how thin the dividing line between madness and genius can be. . . Navtej has surpassed himself.

The best recital [in the three-day "Impressario India's Choreography Festival" was by Navtej Johar] in the Bharatanatyam style. . . Very abstract in interpretation, three very fine dancers along with Navtej's occasional intervention, made a fine presentation.

The enmeshing of different musical genres, all emphasising Sufi mysticism . . .enabled the inner dancer to speak. . . Ecstasy and surrender come easily to Navtej whose mobile face mirrored every emotion.

What Navtej achieved in his performance was a stiff brushing away of the cobwebs of imagery that Bharatanatyam had acquired over the recent years. And in abandoning its decorative aspect Navtej happened upon its design, its taut geometry, its power of suggestion and communication without drowning in spiralling contexts and syntax. It is in this vein that Navtej’s varnam became an exercise in joy . . . a tour de force.

In form alone, Navtej triumphs . . .[his] Bharatanatyam is soaked in bhakti . . . His face and dance register an inner stillness akin to a yogi’s--something difficult to attain in dance, the art of motion.

Navtej Johar, a maverick Bharatanatyam dancer who threw everyone in a light hearted spin with his modern dance.

[F]ew dancers attain that inner growth which alone gives to the dance that sense of discovery. Navtej Johar is one of those rare Sikhs doing Bharatanatyam, who has managed to experience that visceral communication with one’s inside through the dance. Sublime and ecstatic in Radha’s recollected image of Krishna. . . the dancer’s rendition had a beatific quality.