personal
This immersion allowed for an engagement with dance that was synchronous across our physical, emotional, musical and intellectual selves - a synchrony that is otherwise hard to come by in the disjointed nature of freelance urban life.
Read MoreI am a practitioner of a dance form that not many white people have heard of, let alone are able to pronounce, so half the conversations I have are reduced to me trying to explain what I do. These conversations inaccurately render Bharatanatyam a minority practice, and I a minority artist, trying endlessly to relate what I do to an elusive notion of ‘mainstream dance’.
Read MoreWhat stops me from perceiving my practice and my form in a radically different way, from trying things that may raise eyebrows? Is it even possible to be both a classical dancer and a radical one?
Read MoreMy ballet teacher refused to show any sequence more than once, demanding that we try and rebuild the movement purely from what the body might have subconsciously picked up from observation. This seemed ludicrous to me.
Read MoreI don't own the bharatanatyam that I dance - it's something that I was given a share of by my teachers, and something that's gradually been handed over to me bit by bit, sometimes generously, sometimes cautiously. Until I own it, the teacher owns it, and India always owns it.
Read MoreI wrote on my conservatory-come-studio window, with my red chalk pen: "Get experience with companies / choreographers."
Read MoreThere are so many layers of irony at play here, no doubt referential to the depth of my regret.
Read MoreMy understanding of Bharatanatyam unravelled while in India as I gathered up an overwhelming array of questions.
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