i am a dancer

I’ve danced for as long as I remember, so who am I?

I started dancing early in life. At the age of four, my mom enrolled me in Indian classical dance, Bharatanatyam, and there began my arduous, yet joyful relationship with dance. When I first began Bharatanatyam, I couldn’t stand it. While the rest of my four-year-old peers spent their Fridays traipsing around in their pink tutus, learning how to do pirouettes and arabesques in a clean, white-walled studio filled with quiet classical music, I was stuck in a studio wearing a bright yellow salwar kameez listening to my teacher constantly demand more aramandi as the girls around me stamped their feet and executed jatis perfectly . Or at least that’s how it felt to me. Not one day passed without me begging my mom to put me in ballet- so she did. This passion was immensely short-lived, as, after the first 1 hour class of being told to look taller and leap higher and doing miserable pliés at the barre to sleepy classical music, I realized that ballet was not for me.  So, I convinced myself that I loved Bharatanatyam, and that turned into my passion. Yet, I still found myself wishing I could be a ballerina like the rest of the girls in my group of elementary school friends. I don’t think this was because of a lack of love for the art that I was in, but my lack of understanding of my identity.  My mom would often give idli and sambhar as a kid for lunch. I still remember my embarrassment as I would crack the containers open, and would quickly close them before the slightly fermented idli smell, and tart smell of tamarind would penetrate the odorless air of PBJ sandwiches on white, white bread, and colorfully packaged Lunchables. I would often look longingly at their easy names that would never be messed up by ignorant substitute teachers. I envied that they would never be asked where they were from, or where they are really from- I’m from Austin! As for Bharatanatyam, it was yet another different about me, and of course, I would explain each time that no, it’s not Bollywood, it’s Bharatanatyam. By the end of elementary, I was asking people to just google the term to save myself from the long explanations. It took me all of elementary school to get over this insecurity. I remember thinking to myself, why should I care if I am not like everyone else, so I began to embrace this culture that I am part of. That was the beginning of my growing love for Bharatanatyam. And of course, my dance began to flourish, little by little, although there were plenty of other challenges. I participated in tons of workshops- I worked with different gurus and different pieces. I had fun with dance, but I was definitely always good at dancing. My aramandi was less than average, I could not sustain the pain of stamping hard and energetically, and my abhinaya was nonexistent. I had so little confidence in my dance that I could barely smile and I always danced in the backline. In workshops, I would make sure to never be called on, and I would be completely quiet- two attributes that are shocking for a person as outgoing and extroverted as me. I remember in one workshop the guru was assigning a rasa (emotion or expression) for each dancer to emulate through dance, and he only contemplated biyankam (fear) because according to him, that was the expression I showcased every time I was called on. I still loved dance, but I couldn’t bring myself to improve myself and really find a true passion for the dance. Of course, if I had found what I had about Bharatanatyam right before high school began when I was 10, I could have fixed these problems easily. So, that was me a dancer for a large part of seven or eight years. It took me being almost forced to quit multiple practices a week in the same old group, and me being forced to move to a different group to begin to have a passion and love for dance again. Finally, I looked forward to Sunday classes- and for the first time in my entire life as a dancer, I confidently took the spot in the front line in front of Divya Aunty. This was the real beginning of my journey with Bharatanatyam- my Bharatanatyam began to emulate my personality- bold, unapologetic, yet slightly dreamy.  As a young elementary school kid who only had friends who did Ballet, I wondered why I had a passion for Bharatanatyam; what I didn’t understand was that until I really loved Bharatanatyam, my passion was merely a weak liking for the act of dancing. But, as I have continued dance, Bharatanatyam has become a way to connect to my incredibly Indian roots in the midst of my incredibly American surroundings. Bharatanatyam has become my choice, instead of the dance that I have convinced myself to do. Bharatanatyam is such a large portion of my identity, it has dictated my weekend plans, allows me access to a culture I am only partially a part of, and of course gives me the opportunity to dress up in a way that would not be socially acceptable in any other place than the stages and temples that I perform on. It’s my way of self-expression where the often ancient stories that I demonstrate through jatis and abhinaya, somehow mirror my own emotions and experiences. As a dancer, the first thing to know is that it’s important to find the reason you dance and your identity as a dancer. Bharatanatyam has to mean something to you for you to find any meaning in the dances that you perform. It took me nearly until high school to figure this out. At the brink of me quitting dance to focus on other passions, was when I realized that I valued Bharatanatyam for more than just its being a form of dance, but because it gave me an identity and a way to understand myself.  And nearly a year after this revelation, I remember being told by Divya aunty that I was finally ready for an Arangetram. Although I had been practicing the same art for almost 10 years at that point with very little improvement, it took that year of finding true love for Bharatanatyam and my own cultural identity for me to transform into a true dancer. Looking back at my oldest videos of my dance, I can see the lack of understanding and love oozing through my fake smiles and forced moves, but I can see as the years move closer to the present, my facial expressions evolve to be more real, and my moves more fluid. My technique might not have been perfect, but that could be fixed by the year of rigorous practice that would follow.