“Her Journey of dance”

This is the story of a girl living in Bangalore, India. She was 6 years when her mom took her to dance classes, thus began her journey of dancing . She was all excited to go since she was going to learn something new apart from the usual school studies as she called it. Haha, though she had no clue about what school studies actually was since she was just in her first grade. We all know we don’t really have much of studies compared to other higher grades at school.

 

Well, let’s get back to our story. Her mom parks her two-wheeler to the left of the building and takes her daughter and walks towards the building. They are stopped by the watchman who after collecting the information required for the visitor’s log book let’s them in. He said that the dance classes were being held on the second floor of the building . As they reached the class , the little girl could hear a sound that sounded something like the one created when you hit the floor using some sort of stick ( She realised that the sound she first heard was the sound of natvangam).

She noticed a pretty lady sitting in front of the class busy with natvangam and directing the students to dance to the beat. The little girl let’s name her Ritu. Ritu and her mom walked towards the dance teacher. Her dance teacher smiled at Ritu and her mom .Introduced them to her class students. She gestured Ritu’s mom to sit on one the of chairs beside her where few other parent’s were sitting and watching their kid dance. Dance teacher then looked at Ritu and introduced herself as Ms Vani Ganpathy.

Guru- Vani Ganapathy.

Once the introduction was over she got up and showed her how to sit in “aramandi” in bharatnatyam . Ritu loved her new teacher ( she was both pretty and danced excellently well). It was when she tried herself that ritu realised that it wasn’t as easy as her teacher made it appear. Her legs hurt …she couldn’t sit the way other students ( beginner’s) did. Her mam noticed Ritu’s feet . She stopped the little girl and went to her mom and said she might find it quite difficult to do the dance and might take years to learn since Ritu had flat foot.

 

Both mom and Ritu were very keen on learning. Seeing their willingness to learn dance despite the problem Ms Vani thought for a while and said she will try and train her for a year or two and see how things turn out and then decide whether to continue or not.Ritu and her mom were both happy.

 

Practice sessions were pretty tough. She had to take extra effort to practise the steps that the others could easily do. At times Ritu had lost hope in dancing, but her mom never lost hope. There were days were Ritu was almost fed up coz of the excruciating pain caused due to dancing, and all she wanted was to quit the dance classes. Nevertheless, she still continued to go regularly to the classes because her mom wanted her to go .

 

Days passed…Months passed … it was almost a year and a half now. Her legs had slowly got acclimatised to regular vigorous practise. She noticed that pain had reduced and she could do the steps much better than before. Though the change was quite gradual. Her dance teacher had noticed this change too.. She was happy that the little girl took so much effort to continue… little did she know that she had done it all only because her mom asked her to keep trying .Ha-ha she used to think her mom was being cruel to her though years later Ritu was glad that her mom didn’t let her stop the dance classes.

 

Vani mam was a strict teacher though. She always said “Learning Bharatnatyam is to be done with lot of effort and care. If your basics in Bharatnatyam isn’t strong enough ..then it’s like constructing and entire building with a weak base or foundation”. It’s been 5 years since she learnt dance under Smt Vani ganapathi. Everytime someone praises her dance skills she thought of her dance mam since it was cause of her that her basic movements where so strong.

 

Her dad being in a transferable job. He gets a transfer every 5 years. Since they had been in Bangalore for over 5 years it was time to move . This time the place was Chennai. The first thing Ritu’s mom did after reaching Chennai was to search for a dance class.. She joins her daughter in a dance class near Kali bari temple.

Guru- J Suryanarayana Murthy.

Ritu’s new dance teacher was a male dancer J Suryanarayana Murthy( Kalakshetra) . Ritu had by now started liking dancing. She was just glad that her mom took the effort to take her to the classes regularly even when she tried every possible reason to avoid the classes. The Learning process was slow but steady. Slowly she learnt Puspanjali , Alaripu, Jathiswaram,….Varnam, Thilana, Padam and many other dance choreographed by her Guru J Suryanarayana Murthy.

 

Ritu was good at handling both academics and extra curricular activities like dance and music. However , she had decided to take a break when she reached class 10 and concentrate more on studies. Life gets busy after she joins hostel (hostel life for 6 years) .Though despite her busy life she always made time to participate in college dance programs and realised every time she danced that she missed her dance classes. She finishes her master’s in Biotechnology ( M.Tech) and by the end of her course gets married.

 

Her new life’s going great. She moved to Singapore. Somewhere deep down she wished to dance again. Lucky her , her hubby wanted her to join dancing again. Ritu was ecstatic and decides to enjoy each and every moment of her dance classes. She then sits down to browse and find out the different dances academies near her and finally the day had come.

Guru- Neewin Hershall.

She joins a new dance academy – Nrithyalaya ( Bhaskar’s Arts Academy) and meets her new dance Guru- Neewin Hershall(kalakshetra). The best part was he said he knew her previous dance professor “ J Suryanarayana murthy”.

Happy with life , its been five months now since she has rejoined her dance classes . She had already performed in Bhaskareeyam 2017. She learnt dance quite well and she owed it to all her dance gurus who had helped her become who she is now .She’s glad that its a long weekend, she sits on the couch and thinks about her entire journey of 11 yrs of dancing to be more precise and that’s when she decides to write down yet another blog. Agreeing on the fact that dance is indeed a shortcut to happiness.

By:Aswathi Ashok.