I started learning Bharatanatyam when I was seven years old. My mom forced me to begin studying the art form because she had learned it when she was young. She loved it and apparently, it was necessary that I did too.
Initially, I couldn’t understand how she developed this love. To me, dance was something I simply learned once a week. As a young child, I didn’t understand the significance to the steps that I was learning and I didn’t have any particular connection to the dance. I couldn’t grasp what about it fascinated so many people. My experience with Bharatanatyam continued this way for about 9 more years. I went to class once a week at first, then twice a week as I moved up in levels. My study of the dance form grew from basic steps to more complex sequences. However, while my interest and enjoyment of the dance form admittedly increased over the years, it was never something that I felt truly connected to. My experience with Bharatanatyam continued this way for about 9 more years. I went to class once a week at first, then twice a week as I moved up in levels. My study of the dance form grew from basic steps to more complex sequences. However, while my interest and enjoyment of the dance form admittedly increased over the years, it was never something that I felt truly connected to. With this increased power, I began to develop a new relationship with Bharatanatyam. I was able to choose the pieces I was going to be presenting, personalizing the stories I was able to tell. Performing pieces that suited my personality allowed me to inject my own humor and abilities into my dance. Developing a different connection to each piece pushed me to consider them beyond just the dance movements. I needed to express what made my dancing different from everyone else’s. It was only then that I began to understand the fundamental difference between executing a piece and performing a piece. The minute corrections that go ignored in a general dance class become highlighted in an individualized arangetram rehearsal. I began to consider every movement I completed before doing a step. I had never before placed such an emphasis on the rotation of my wrists or the firmness of my fingers, yet corrections like these suddenly seemed like huge glaring errors. The personalization of Bharatanatyam that my arangetram enabled caused me to respect and care about my dancing in a way I had never done before. Through my arangetram, I came to understand the various factors of a Bharatanatyam performance. I earned a whole new appreciation for the choreography process, realizing just how difficult it is to tailor dance moves to a dancer’s abilities. I had always been concerned with dancing the pieces but I never thought about the process that went into creating them. I watched as my guru studied the music, counting out beats and pauses in the rhythm, teaching me the math behind the art form. I was introduced to a deeper level of abhinaya, one that required me to conjure emotions I hadn’t yet experienced during my seventeen years of life. I learned how to tell stories using what I understood as Sahi’s expansive mental dictionary of dance movements and gestures. I no longer identified a dance piece by its steps but through the story I was trying to tell. I came to understand my body through its specific talents and limitations. I witnessed the challenges that accompany customizing choreography, along with the creative solutions that Bharatanatyam allows. As we moved further into my arangetram process, I was exposed to the powers that an orchestra wields. I discovered how the combination of music and dance brings stories to life in a way that dancing alone simply cannot achieve. Because of my arangetram, I came to appreciate all of the factors that contributed to a Bharatanatyam performance, many of which I had never even considered. Preparation for my arangetram also allowed me to learn from those dancing around me. I danced with students of all ages. When dancing with younger students, I was able to relearn and rethink the movements that I considered basic to dance. The children I danced with taught me the importance of keeping an open mind. Their excitement and fascination when learning new dance steps reminded me of just how lucky I was to be able to study a classical form of dance so intently. When dancing with older students, I realized the importance of refining my technique. The deeper study of dance that occurred with these groups demonstrated how much learning I still had to do. The lessons I was able to learn from my gurus (Sridhar Shanmugam and Sahasra Sambamoorthi) extended far beyond dance. They taught me the results of determination and hard work, along with the value of respect and discipline. As I spent more time with then, my reverence for their talents only increased. From them, I learned the meaning of true passion. Their unwavering support and patience demonstrated their love for Bharatanatyam. My journey with this dance form has been a long one, and now, after my arangetram, I am certain it is not over. It has evolved from an activity I was forced into to a true part of my identity. From this process, I was able to make Bharatanatyam my own. I did not realize my appreciation for the dance until immediately after I had completed my arangetram, when still standing on stage I burst into tears. Overcome by emotion, I finally grasped what compelled others to truly love this dance form. Bharatanatyam has the power to transport both the dancer and the audience to another world. It has the ability to tell the most detailed of stories with just a few gestures. It is a dance form that is centuries old, yet never ceases to seem relevant. Through my extended practice of the dance, I was able to develop the capacity to truly feel the spirituality and mythology with every step I completed. My arangetram allowed me to establish a personal connection with Bharatanatyam. The relationship that I have built with Bharatanatyam is a direct result of my arangetram and something that I will always cherish.
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As a member of Navatman for the past two years, I’ve had a chance to observe first-hand the idea of art that seems to underlie the Navatman community’s diverse activities. To put it simply, people at Navatman don’t see performance as the end-all and be-all of art. While the concert hall is certainly important, art’s power to touch and transform us is felt as much in the act of performing as in the process of teaching and learning, as much on stage as in the company of one’s friends or the privacy of one’s home.
At Navatman, the word “artist” would apply just as well to a four-year-old starting dance lessons as to a music teacher who has been training for several years. Now, recent events have pressed many of us to ask ourselves what it is we do in life and why we do it. I wanted to address these questions to my fellow artists, understood in the more inclusive sense that Navatman gives this word: as teachers, learners, and performers of art, what do we do, and what does art do for us? For those of us who can afford to indulge in it, art can offer much consolation when life is unsettling. For an entire week after the election, a friend of mine and an aunt drowned themselves in music. While music affirmed my friend’s sense of kinship with others, it helped my aunt confront thoughts for which she felt language did not have the strength. As for me, I turned to the poetry of Whitman, which I hoped would assure me that democracy is still possible. But apart from consolation, what else does art give? What concrete solutions can it offer to the problems of the times? For is it not precisely at moments like this, when the stakes are so high, that art begins to seem superfluous, an elite preoccupation which insulates us from the issues rather than calling our attention to them? Art once again finds itself in the position of having to defend itself, and once again the task of defending it falls to reason. We trust reason to decide what is or is not worth pursuing. For example, I have reasonably proposed that art can offer us solace. Others like to emphasize other uses of art, for example, its capacity to refine our emotions, enhance our creativity, or train our sympathetic impulse. Art may well do all of these things. Still, we may wonder why it is that we should trust reason to judge the value of art. Where does reason derive its authority to judge one way or another? Why do we measure art by the standards of reason, and not rather look at reason, as Nietzsche once proposed, “through the prism of art?” The news seems no less tolerable today than it did before the election. In place of a series of reports on the most recent scandal or outrageous remark, we now hear the latest of a hundred well-reasoned analyses of “what went wrong.” Such explanations no doubt have their place in deciding where to go from here. But when a flood of them overwhelms us, it can become easy for us to start tuning out the noise. It’s always astonishing when something that moved us just weeks ago can be met with increasing indifference, so that no matter how hard we think about a goal, we cannot seem to recover the sense of urgency that first inspired in us the motivation to pursue it. In thinking about these important relations between reason and art, art and decision-making, breathing offers an important lesson. Inhale and exhale have the rhythm of an ebb and flow: in each pair, one marks the other’s limit. The sea’s releasing clasp upon the shore is none other than the earth’s respiration. However much land the sea has covered, it can go no farther without returning to itself for a moment. That moment is when the water takes in a breath, literally inspires, gathering the strength to wash the earth anew. However deep is our analysis, however, powerful our explanation, all of it expires without a corresponding inspiration. Art might be none other than this: a returning to ourselves, a reminder of what and where we are, a gathering of strength before folding back upon the world with a surer and vaster embrace. Not at all an escape, then, but a thing most needful in uncertain times. My relationship with music when I was young was a rather tumultuous one. I was what you'd call a 'perfectionist'. I would get extremely annoyed if I could not get a note right. With much practice and effort, I did two concerts under the tutelage of the ever encouraging Sivasakthi Sivanesan, but when I needed to go to college, I decided to step away.
Enough music, I thought! It was time to focus on studies! Fast forward a few years later, and I had made it: I came to New York for work. In my four years of not singing, I realized how much I missed it. I decided to take classes up again, but NOT performance. Learn I did, from my music teacher, Kamini Dandapani. She introduced me to other musicians around the city through her culture nights, and it was there I heard Shiv Subramaniam and Roopa Mahadevan sing. I immediately was spell bound. A few months later, Kamini asked me whether I would be interested in joining a Carnatic Music Choir - a new concept which Sahi Sambamoorthi from Navatman had thought of and which Roopa Mahadevan would be heading. I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet new, like minded people and so I sent in my audition tape. I wondered with a mixture of excitement and trepidation what it would be like to sing with such amazing artists. As we started learning songs, something in me began to change. The initial nervousness I felt began to dissipate, and when that melted, I began to see the lovely people around me. Roopa and Shiv were so giving in their music and never made us feel like we lacked anything other than practice. Each song that we learnt was a new challenge because we had to learn to sing together. For the first time in years, I was eager to show my dad what I had learnt. Music provided a nice balance to my work life, my MBA life, and my social life. Everything fell into place and helped the other. Then Drive East happened and two more people joined our motley crew. We started gearing up for our marathon-esque November 2014 concerts. Two hour practices during free weekends turned into major events. We ate, hung out, sang together. We got closer, and opened up more about our personal lives. From strangers to friends, we started thinking like a group. Our November concert was a success. We had earned a month off. And as much as I wanted that month off, I found myself missing my NMC'ers. I used every opportunity to meet them again. My perspective on music had changed. I wanted to sing, I found myself creating. I learnt life lessons from my new friends which I was able to implement in my work and personal life. When I was facing a particularly rough time, the NMC members did their very best to support and encourage me. Each member (Roopa, Shiv, Janani, Divya, Shraddha, Vignesh, Kaushik, Bhargavi, Rashmi, Kamini, Kalpana) has taught me something precious. Special mention to Sahi who helped us come together in the first place, as well as Anjna, Rajna and all musicians who were with us through this journey. I can say that now I have grown to love music, and have grown to acknowledge my own insecurities about it. I have even grown to understand myself more, and taken inspiration from this incredible network. It has helped me with my work and has provided me with the ability to think freely and creatively. I am lucky to be a part of it, and count my blessings every day. So thanks NMC. You have given me so much more than music! My mother was born into a conservative, blunt family that hailed from Mangalore. Despite growing up in 'progressive' Bombay, she was raised to understand that dance was a very courtesan-way-of-life and that self-respecting daughters from good families did not subject themselves to the wayward ways of dancers. So when a Bharatanatyam dance class opened up right below her building, my mother's favorite solace was to peek through cracked windows or crevices between doors hoping to get a glimpse a single step or stance. It was in that moment when her profoundly rebellious 11-year-old made a determination that if she ever had a daughter in her future, she would ensure her the experience of classical Indian dance, uninhibited and unjudged. It took over two decades for her to see life come a full circle when my mom discovered that my first dance teacher had in fact learned Bharatanatyam from the same dance school below my mother's house.
The seeds of my passion were sown 22 years before I was born! I started dancing when I was five. I had two missing front teeth with an obsessive need to talk incessantly and the attention-span of a goldfish -- clearly not the best qualities in an ideal student. Yet, the memories that effortlessly jolt out of my head are the ones where I'd hiss out numerous Sanskrit shlokas from my toothless mouth and pair them appropriately with fingers twisting into mudras or hand gestures. While I was still trying to grapple with the nuances of grammar and the spoken word, I discovered a power in the mime of dance and music, a pathway to communicate with the world without saying a word. Little did I know that what started out as an exciting after-school activity would end up influencing my raison d'être as an individual, an artist, and a global citizen. Dance taught me discipline. It reinforced the importance of repetition and perseverance in that it took hours, months and years of trying the same thing over, again and again, to come close to getting it right. It enhanced my cognitive abilities by helping me process complex math in music and rhythm through my body. Performing the art form on stage made me expand my faculties of multitasking by having to focus on beat, rhythm, melody, memory, order of sequence, transcending beyond the structure, reaching out to the audience and connecting to the divine -- all at once. In the process of sharing the broken stories of our history, mythology, and culture, I believe that dance helped me heal. While I have always felt passionately for Bharatanatyam and Odissi, I pursued another career path and there were many moments when other things or events took precedence. However, in the depths of depression, loss and identity crisis -- I always found refuge in dance. So when I got married in 2014 and knew that my life would realign to call New York home, I started on a clean new slate. Having lost the regime of rigorous practice and stamina and living in an apartment with paper-thin walls and wafer-thin floors, I dusted off the remnants of a desire to dance again. Agreed, I was in New York City and not in the open grasslands of farmland America -- but being 7,786 miles away from home meant that I looked at this as the end of the road. With Bollywood on the rise and watching way too many watered-down versions of classes around, I didn't expect much. I looked at the dance and music scene with a suspect, knowing full well that there was a great quality of Indian classical dancers in the US but somehow feeling disconnected in finding the right people. And then dance found me. I discovered Navatman by chance. My husband and I were googling dance schools in the area and we found Navatman - a school for both classical Indian dance forms and Carnatic music. I checked out their Performing Arts Management Program (PAMP) and Performing Arts Education Program (PAEP) -- programs that were designed to equip and train you as a dancer and teacher as well as help you develop additional skill sets to support the business and administrative side of the field. I applied for the program and met Sahi, the founder of Navatman, and a new journey began. A Gurukula: In Sanskrit and Hindi, "Guru" means Teacher "Kula" means Clan or Family. So the phrase Gurukula translates to a form of a school system where students lived together as equals under the tutelage of their Guru who looked at them as his extended family. In the Gurukula system, every interaction with the Guru became a teaching point, so that students would learn to appreciate the mundane and the boring with the same enthusiasm as they would grasp the intellectual tasks. Life lessons were as important as skillful lessons, equating the importance of everyday chores like cooking, washing and cleaning to archery, math, and swordsmanship. Being 1000s of miles away from home, I would have been happy with just learning the art form correctly. However, when I signed up for the PAMP/PAEP program at Navatman I learned so much beyond just the dance form. I was encouraged to look at Bharatanatyam from a highly holistic perspective. Like semesters in school, Sahi and I went over what I wanted to learn at Navatman and she laid down what she expected of me. We found mutual areas of learning for the next 2 semesters and agreed of ways to accomplish these goals. I was asked to immediately hit the ground running, with understanding and delivering on social media, supporting a student showcase event, artist management for Drive East, finding venues for workshops and future events, budgeting and building a Diwali event from scratch, learning and improving my stance as a dancer, performing at various venues within and outside the city, taking advance level classes in carnatic vocal and teaching a few classes to 4-6 year olds. From the everyday and mundane to the absolutely exciting, this journey with Navatman has felt nothing short of living in a modern-day Gurukul. In the 9 months that I have worked with them, I have learned so much more about the business of dance than I did when I was just learning about the art form in isolation in India. In many ways, I realized the value in improving my skill set as a singer/musician, and how improving my music abilities has made me a better teacher. Learning to be a better teacher, in turn, has helped me absorb dance from a different perspective. I now don't just learn to retain but learn to teach. I've also realized how life learnings have happened through everyday conversations and many of my 'aha' moments happened outside the classroom in a conversation or brainstorming session. Navatman has been that safe space for me where I have found my voice. It has been that avenue where I can be myself and not worry about being judged, I openly talk about politics and how I actually feel, reflect on the society we live in, question the perspectives of the mythological stories we share with children, and brainstorm about ways to continue to be relevant in a dynamic multicultural society. From form, caliber, and technique to choreography, culture, and community, I have perceived a new facet to my humanity, the pride of my diversity, the uniqueness of my identity in a different country. It is in these interactions that I have discovered the love to preserve a large part of my culture and be a responsible bridge that passes on this precious piece of our heritage to the next generation. And it is in the process of this discovery that has led me to believe that I needed to be so far away from home to realize that 'home' is a place where you belong. And I belong here. In Navatman. And in New York City. |
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