THE NINTH RURAL OUTREACH PROGRAM

Our Ninth Rural Outreach, conducted in wintry Dhasa in the February of 2023, has been our most annoyingly technical yet. It couldn't have been any other way since our girls are now beginning to "Prepare to Perform".

Performing is a journey. And very often, managing your mind allows the body to fall into play and place. It is a journey because the final act is a culmination of all the mental and physical preparation along the way.

Our girls here are strong, technical, agile and graceful but integrating these very qualities into a performance that reflects all of the above, requires involvement, confidence and repetitive work which will make their proposed performance routines so practiced that they flow almost naturally and fluidly as they are meant to.

Our Outreach Program focused on processes that saw them work on every kind of movement, engaging every relevant part of their body with intention and concentration. So that a performance ultimately, no longer feels like one. It is simply them dancing Classical Dance, ready for an audience to receive it.

They came through their fundamentals, small choreographed sequences, body preparation for both Classical Dance forms - Classical Ballet and Bharata Natyam, strengthening and stretching, Athletics, Yoga, Pilates, other training drills and a very pointed focus on technique, where literally every point and flex and stretch of the limbs was scrutinized.

This stint comprised no fun and games. We all meant serious business. Because technique training can't be any other way. We can only imagine how frustrating, frying and fatiguing it must have all been. Because we felt it too. Technique is boring because how monotonous and seemingly endless the process of fully absorbing it is. But no performance is possible without a command over it. It is what differentiates a dancer and makes her unparalleled. So, we had to all swallow our tears today, to be able to shine tomorrow.

For all the training they have now come through, Performing the art form one practices is the natural, logical, inevitable next step. And our girls here are itching for it; we just have to make sure they are absolutely and amazingly ready to blaze. With courage, humility.

But always, with Junoon.

And slowly but steadily, we are getting performance ready!

It was both surprising and inspiring how their smiles remained intact until that last training session with the setting sun. It told us their Junoon is here to stay no matter how tough, how rough and how painfully boring, hard and impossible training gets. And there, in that light in their eyes, we rediscovered our Junoon.

Until our next time together,
We wish our girls rest, recreation and steadfast memories of every
correction so that it is thoroughly practiced, to very soon be performed.