I am usually greeted with surprise when it comes up that I
learnt Bharatanatyam for 10 years. Of course there is also the, ‘Oh! All you
south Indians learn Bharatanatyam!’. :P
But since the time I remember dance has always been a part
of our lives. My parents encouraged all three of us to display our talents to
any and all unsuspecting visitors to the house. :P
Mom’s a superbly graceful
dancer but didn’t have an opportunity to gain formal training. Dad just loves
to see us on stage.
So it was natural that they talked about getting us to
formally learn dance. Now it so happened that the movie ‘Dard ka Rishta’ (The
relationship of pain?) had played the previous evening.
All I remembered from
it was this song that had the lines ‘Main pariyon ki shehzaadi’ (I am the queen of
fairies) and the fairy-like costumes that the child actor Khushboo had worn.
How desperately we wanted those fairy costumes with wings! (We eventually found
some pretty, white dresses but there was not one wing in sight. Sigh.)
Now remember I was all of four at the time, though my
imagination was hard at work. The promise of going to dance class combined with
this song and the public garden in front of our building, combined to throw up
a vivid dream that night.
I dreamt that I was dancing with fairies in the garden and I
woke up feeling quite certain that is exactly what I was going to do in dance
class.
Image Courtesy Allison Archer
@moonbeamz
Imagine my shock when I entered the class and saw kids doing ‘tha-thai,
tha-thai’, arms akimbo and beating their feet to the rhythm. No fairies. No
wings. No flights of fancy.
This was not the dance I had imagined! That started my
grouch against the dance form. I wanted to fly and here I was being grounded by
what I didn’t know were the first basic steps of the dance.
Another grouse was that all the classes were on Saturday
evenings and Sunday mornings. That’s exactly when Doordarshan showed all their
cartoon shows! From Spider-Man to He-Man I missed them all except for the
opening songs.
So most of my memories of those shows are either the ‘I love
you, Rasna’ ads that played before Spider-Man began or Prince Adam transforming
to He-Man yelling ‘I have the power!’ at the end of that rousing score. Frankly
though, it was more fascinating to see his pet tiger Cringer turning into
Battle Cat!
It was only when I felt I had some agency at the grand age
of 14 that I said no more to Bharatanatyam classes. Spider-Man and He-Man had
long disappeared down the horizon by that point.
We had also danced at numerous stage shows and contests,
expanding our repertoire to folk dances at school as well as learning
traditional dance forms from Kerala at the Malayali Samaj our parents had a been
part of. So there was kaikottikali (or Thiruvathirakali, performed at Hindu
festivals), oppana (performed for the bride at Muslim weddings) and Margamkali
(performed at Christian weddings and church feasts).
In fact we had danced at
so many contests for the Malayali
Samajam by our 10th grade that I ended up staying away from all
contests and dance in college. :P
And yet perhaps it is the memory of those fairies dancing in
the garden... for even now when a rhythmic song plays my imagination readily
supplies choreography no matter where I might happen to be at the time.
Funnily, I end up ‘dancing’ even when I’m about to eat
something yummy and sometimes even while just happily eating! My friend, Carisa,
would often teasingly yell, ‘stop dancing, Rajani!’
And that’s when I would
realise that it didn’t matter that I had been sitting or standing, for my feet
would be tapping their happy beat as I swayed from side-to-side blissfully! :P
Dance has also seeped into my workouts. Like most people I
find exercise both a bore and a chore. My latest compromise with exercise is
to go looking for dance workouts, particularly in this pandemic period.
So
courtesy of the super enthusiastic Mike Peele and his merry band of dancers
with their fun Hip-Hop Fit videos on YouTube, I’ve been hip-hopping away.
This is not counting the 'junglee dancing' or mad dancing that I've been encouraging my niece, Aisha, to do along with me since she was a toddler. This is a spillover from all those times in childhood when my sister, Sappu, and I would leave all formal training behind and just dance like loons to our heart's content. :D
Image
Courtesy: <a href='https://www.freepik.com/vectors/music'>Music vector
created by ddraw - www.freepik.com</a>
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