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