Kalakshetra My Journey With Dance

[Music]

i begin

by acknowledging the hereditary artists

throughout india

and recognize the importance of their

contribution to the form of downs that i

speak about today

i pay my respects to their community

past present and emerging

my name is christopher gurusami and i am

a bhartinan dancer

when i was 17 and finishing high school

i really didn’t know what i was going to

do

i had no idea what my future would be

now i remember when i received my high

school certificate

graduation mrs petrina rodriguez the

principal of chisholm catholic college

she handed it to me and she said you’re

going to dance your way through

life and in my head i laughed

and i said yeah right

now look i grew up in perth western

australia which is a

very normal place it’s the world’s most

isolated capital it’s where the swan

river meets the indian ocean

on the southwest coast it’s sunny

beaches

line at suburbs i remember when i was 11

or 12

when our population hit 1 million people

now if you’re like me and you grow up

indian it’s the kind of city where you

go to school get good grades go to uni

get a job

meet someone buy a house have kids watch

a lot of football matches

and you grow old it’s a great place to

grow up and

a wonderful place to live but somehow i

knew that it wasn’t always going to be

the place

for me now in full disclosure in school

i wasn’t very good at maths

or science or computers

or spelling but what i was really good

at was

painting poetry drawing and dance

you know stuff that people constantly

reminded me wouldn’t make me easily

successful

it was the path that was much less

followed and a very very hard path of

that

so i compartmentalized the arts and

tried to figure out a way to follow the

conventional

i thought i would become i don’t know a

nurse

or i’d work in a shop or

something but i always danced

i danced about the nighttime i’ve done

jazz tap gymnastics ballet

i even took it as a subject in high

school

now my high school had this thing if you

were good at something you had to do it

so i was told that i had to audition for

ballet university wapa

in perth i remember standing at the bar

raising my arm and thinking to myself

god i absolutely hate this

and i think it was then that i thought i

wish i had the

guts to go to kalachatra

now kalaksha there is one of the most

prestigious dance schools for

bharatanatyam in the world

the institute was founded in 1936 by

srimati rupa nidalee arundel in chennai

india

as an international institution for the

sharing of south indian classical arts

it’s an institution of national

importance and has been infused with the

work of

great artists dancers and musicians

it played a major role in the

establishment of the dance we know as

birth nature today

so this is all happening in 2005 and the

internet

wasn’t what it is now and going to india

to study dance seemed

absolutely insane so i sent a

handwritten letter

asking for an application form i’m not

100 sure i wanted them to send one back

but they did

two months later and i filled it in and

i sent it back

by post and i was given a date for an

interview

and only after that interview would i be

accepted as a student

or not so i thought i would at least try

to go

so i wanted to go to this school

but i didn’t know that being a dancer

was an actual job

i didn’t know how complex the form

really was i didn’t know its history

i didn’t know the music and the

aesthetics i didn’t know about the

annual december season

but what i did know was that i wanted to

dance

i’ve always loved dance dance is still

the reason i wake up most mornings

my mum carol who is english she was the

first

student of my paternal aunt shimodi

lakshmi ramen

my aunt was the first ever singaporean

to graduate from kalakshetra in the

1960s

so my parents they met through dance

the nizam of hyderabad and a dinner

party

look dance played its part and yes this

is all still happening in perth western

australia

so my mom and dad they fell in love they

got married and they had me

and my mom danced through her pregnancy

which means my dance education started

negative nine months

of however old you think that i am my

mom took me with her when she joined

classes again

and i never stopped going sorry sorry

i’ve got enough time

so how do you try to go to an

institution like colorado

well for one i had an open ticket which

meant i could go to the airport and get

onto the next available flight

so i had an escape route if i needed one

my parents were

very very open and kind of vocal about

me coming home

i’m kind of sure my mom in many ways

would have preferred

just for me to be at home because she

was always worried about me

and most of my families they had bets on

how long i would last that range from a

week to three months

so i knew i had to like last at least a

little bit longer than that

but spoiler alert i’ve been in china for

15 years now so

i won the classes were just brutal it

was a different world

in australia everyone is told you can

achieve if you try

however in india it was as hard as you

try it won’t ever be good enough

but i use the word try because quite

honestly

i never knew if i could or would make it

but at least i gave it a shot

so i’m 18 i’ve moved to chennai do i

know tamil

no did i see the campus before i joined

no did i have family or support

in chennai no did i like indian

food no suddenly i found myself

living in a hostel where waking up at 7

30

on a sunday morning was considered

sleeping in

cold water bucket baths and shower rooms

with frogs in the corner

washing four meter white dothies which

had to be spotless by

hand in buckets was the absolute norm

eating indian food

every day of every meal being 18

and having a curfew of 6 p.m

no tv no internet and definitely

no air conditioning i went from being

one of the five

indian boys in my high school to being

considered white

in two relatively short flights living

for dance was not what i had expected

in my first year of college i got

malaria not once but twice

one time i had a uti a stomach infection

i

almost had to have my appendix removed

all at the same time

i was sick every few days with the tummy

up set

and every night i would pack my bags to

leave

my seniors who were my role models and i

aspired to be like

they would tell me it was too late to go

to the airport so they would take me the

next day

so i would sleep and somehow that next

day would be a little bit easier and i

would say i don’t need to go

it was a really confusing six years yes

that’s right six years and yes i know i

could have become a doctor or a lawyer

or an

engineer in that time but despite all of

this

it was really those years were some of

the most happy years of my life

i remember being inspired by leela

samson who was the director of

kalakshetra during my time at the

institute

the moment i met her i wasn’t awe

she opened school and in so many ways

opened all of the students to a larger

world of dance

getting to watch lilac dance watching

and seeing which

beautiful society she wore each morning

at prayer

learning with her when she would walk

into our classes

i also remember hiding from her when we

were bunking classes and sneaking off to

the hostel

and getting in trouble from her for

jumping over fences but besides that

in my third year i had the same teacher

that my aunt had

40 years earlier

we had amazing performances to watch

from all over india and from sometimes

around the world dances i had seen in

the

few books in bharatanatyu now left and

danced in front of me

and even today when i meet some of them

i still get butterflies in my tuffy

the excitement of being chosen to be

part of the khalakshetra dance dramas

even if it was holding a stick as god

number two for 20 minutes

and then there were the days that

dancing

just felt as good as breathing

we were exposed to literature lectures

temple architecture

four day catholic festival six day music

concerts

ten day annual arts festivals the dance

dramas it was the most beautiful world

that we were all a part of

one of my favorite memories is from my

first year

and walking to watch performance in best

naga temple which is about a

kilometer and a half away and halfway

through the show the power cut and while

we were walking back we got caught in

the rain

and we danced on the deserted chennai

streets at 8 30 p.m

and as we got drenched to the bone my

best friend vasun

who is still my best friend we laughed

how one day we would tell our students

how far we

walked to watch a program and the

hardships we braved

by walking in the rain because we loved

to watch dance

our regular days at college they went

like this we would

we would wake up and go for prayer and

breakfast at 7 am in the dining hall

fully dressed college at 8 30 starting

under the beautiful banyan tree where

they had

prayers from all religions our classes

other than dance were a mixture of

vocal music sunscreen history the theory

of dancing baby heritage

at 10 am we would have a one and a half

hour dance class with no fan in 40

degree

heat with no breaks for water fun

we started our training from scratch so

it didn’t matter if you’d been dancing

but nighttime for years

or weeks or days we all started at the

very beginning

this was followed by lunch and then up

more classes from about one o’clock to

four

we’d have a small break and on wednesday

and friday we’d have this thing called

bun and puff which was a budded bun

and a puff and it was the best

after five o’clock we would return to

college practice

for our own pleasure chasing this idea

of being perfect

but what does it mean to be perfect now

in those days

to me it meant that i could sit in

aramundi a plie type position

for the longest and the lowest i could

bend and lean the

furthest and my lines were the cleanest

and by the time you’re in your final

year

you can make yourself the most amazingly

perfect dancer and

quite frankly i think i was one so as i

stood in my class my first day of my

final year

sweating and i used the two term loosely

because it looked like someone had

thrown a bucket of water

all over me that my teacher he looked at

me and he said

christopher it’s so perfect

it’s so perfect that it’s boring do

something

and my world fell apart i thought i had

wasted

five years of my life that it all been

for nothing

if perfect was boring what was i

what could i do right spent five years

crazed

by this idea of being perfect what did

he mean

despite all the crazy things that i had

gone through this was the thing that

sent my world

spinning i was depressed for weeks

later i came across this quote of a

famous ballet dancer who had a profound

impact on she with the european navy as

well and

pablo it said master technique

and then forget about it and be natural

now look i’m not saying that i’ve

mastered technique at all

but i remember walking to class and i

said to myself

let me try enjoy what i’m doing and i

know that sounds

crazy but it’s true in chasing

perfection

i had forgotten the joy the happiness

and the

love that i had for dance and it almost

felt like something

clicked a few weeks later

i with so many of my teachers and peers

we performed at sri krishna ghana

sabah’s ngati kala conference

a very prestigious event

i did a five minutes a five minute piece

a very small bit of a piece but i

remember that i enjoyed

every moment of it i remember my dad

he he ran up to me and hugged me and

started laughing and my mom was crying

because she was so proud

and lilac who gave me this improving nod

and i was just so confused

a man came up to me and told me that i

had danced so well

that man was sriwaii prabhusa the

chairman of the sabbah

and he invited me to dance as part of

the channing season

my first ever concert as a soloist

and all i had done was dance i’m so

lucky that i’ve danced in krishna ghana

several quite a few times and when i do

there’s always a sense of home because

it’s such a special place for me

after collection it’s really where my

journey started

and all i did was embrace the dance and

not worry about being perfect or

technique and just

and just enjoying what i worked so hard

to do

i think what that quote translates to me

today

is work hard try your hardest and then

when you get the opportunity

enjoy it it’s funny to think about it

now now i realize that

there is so much more to dance than

perfection perfection has

limitations it’s static it’s taken me a

lot of thinking and a lot of people

helping me see the light and go beyond

perfection

dance in this path that is less tread

has taught me to be resilient

to face my problems head on and i’m

so lucky i’m really really lucky even

though this journey hasn’t always been

easy

i’ve learned it’s that when we fall over

that we learn the most

going to kalakshetra was something i

tried to do and i fell over many many

many times but somehow i always picked

myself up and kept going

and now 15 years later i’m still trying

trying to be the best dancer i can be

for myself

if i hadn’t tried to go to collection

through i don’t know what my life would

be and i can’t imagine a life without

dance at all

so go out and try because you never know

what can happen

and then enjoy what you’re doing because

that will make it all so much more worth

it

who knew that my principal all those

years ago would be right

who knew that i would actually dance my

way through life