Aishwarya Sharma, a gentle, generous and gracious Kathak Dancer brings her practise and understanding of a Classical Dance form from North India to our Girls in Dhasa and thereby, our overall curriculum. Our Girls have the rare privilege of learning a third Classical art form just as immersively as they learn the first two. The range of The Junoon Method and the scope of our emerging artistes just got wider.
As a Professional Dancer, it’s pretty obvious that I’m fascinated by most forms of Dance. Obsessed could also be the right word. But I’ve used it so much, it feels a bit overdone. Which is what being obsessed is, as a matter of fact – overdoing. And that explains why I’m never done being a Dancer, never done wanting to learn and know another step, another style of Dance or more within my own. Just when you think you’re “done”, there’s more to class, rehearsal, life in movement and well basically, the Dance.
For the record, it is 47 degrees centigrade in Dhasa, Gujarat, where I am as I write this. The Indian Summer has peaked here. Half of me has melted, the other half is conceiving, processing and executing a vision that has been my mission actively for the last 4 years and passively, for a lifetime (give or take the 6 years after birth – before I officially started dancing). I thought a weather update would put the fascination/obsession into perspective because we’re out here, in temperatures few can even survive in, dancing like nothing else matters (soundness of mind included).
We could be knocked cold (ha! The irony) by heat stroke. But my kids here and I are too used to “Dancing first and thinking later…” Besides, we have a Summer showcase to put on. And God only knows why we ever picked this time of year to show off our dancing skills to anybody. Then again, Art doesn’t always have to be logical. Artists tend to put together their best work in “the heat” of the moment.
My Girls, my Dancers, little monster-pieces of my Dance-obsessed heart (now theirs), among other training segments, have just attended their first ever Kathak (a North Indian Classical Dance style) session. I am not a practicing Kathak Dancer. But, ever since I had a rudimentary training in Kathak to facilitate my understanding of posture, length and alignment for the Dance styles I was majorly practising (Bharata Natyam and Classical Ballet), I have been as enamoured with it as my Girls were today. Apples don’t fall far from the tree.
Classical Dance is magnetic. No matter which style you pick, you’re caught in its grasp forever. And it is this magnetic field that I have sought to bring to my kids, my people in the back of beyond in this all-heart rural heartland.
All throughout their first Kathak lesson, I stood at the back of the class, prompting wherever necessary – for them to behold the beauty in body control exercised by Aishwarya, the elegant instructor before them; for them to know that this stateliness and steadiness in form is a common thread across most Dance forms. Especially the three that they’re now dancing. And that’s when it occurred to me that another dream in the Junoon charter was realized, a dream I have wanted for anyone training in our curriculum:
The Girls here are now officially dancing three Classical Dance forms. They have the privilege of learning three Classical Dance forms at once.
And they’re doing it in a systematized, observant and swift manner, having learned, through their first two forms of Classical Dance, how to learn – an art in itself.
I can tell the Girls are going to have a tricky time discovering what Dance form appeals most to them in the moment. They have such an enviable range to pick from. If I were them (which I was) and they are me (which they are), I’d be ensnared by the magical world of movement to a point of no return. That point has arrived. And I hope with all my heart, their stars comprise the ‘no-turning-back’ story. Because, every day that my talented, tenacious, rugged and earnest lot in Dhasa dances, they get a step ahead of anyone that has known privilege and the complacency it likely brings. My Girls, of course, are privileged in ways I wish I was. In all the pathways being brought to them as Dancers in training, constantly seeking a completeness of practice. My privilege took me places. But I had to be all over the place to have what they have in one. It was a privilege without contentment; a privilege that constantly sought more…
May be it is written in our stars.
May be everything that was ever mine, everything that I have ever wanted, is meant to be theirs.
May be our stars are indeed aligned.
As goes the Dance, the dream definitely feels a lot more complete. And for this reason, we’d rather just embrace the savage heat.
Right here, is a Summer to remember.
This is Junoon.
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