I thought that being stuck inside, smack in the middle of the Indian monsoon season, was as good a time as any to blog. Bangalore, one of the biggest cities in India, where I've been taking bharatnatyam dance classes, is lucky enough to skip out on much of the heavy rains that browbeat the rest of India (or unlucky, if you consider the daily power outages-electricity here is almost completely dependent on water).
Anyway, you could say the outside weather is reflective of my current state. I'm in a rut. For the past week, my dance teacher has been sick with dengue. Dengue fever is common right now in Bangalore, spread by mosquitoes, which are also rampant during monsoon season. Half of my family here has some sort of fever right now, I myself having a fever last week.
But I digress. Thus far, bharatanatyam (Indian classical dance) has been a great experience. In Miami, my hometown, I danced bharatnatyam for nine years before I completed my arangetram--a three hour solo performance that I worked very hard for. It was probably, and still is, the biggest day of my life. In the U.S., many girls do their arangetram (the first solo stage debut), and it is seen as a graduation, or culmination of many years of hard work and dance. Here, it is almost the opposite. An arangetram is still done after seven to ten years of dance, but instead of being a graduation, it is seen as only the beginning. In my arangetram, chief guests (usually a family friend of ours and a senior member of our Indian community who has no real dance knowledge) made speeches glorifying what a great job I had done, but at the two arangetrams I went to here, the dancer was barely complimented. Instead, chief guests who were famous dancers themselves used rhetoric such as "we hope she goes on to take advantage of the the teachers she's got and become a good dancer in the future."
So the last two months have been a humbling but gratifying experience. I haven't danced for the last two years, and I thought, coming here, that my biggest obstacle would be getting physically fit enough to dance the way I used to. My dance teacher was told that I had completed my arangetram, so she definitely didn't expect someone so out of touch with the art. For the first two weeks, I sucked! I was physically out of shape, of course, but more importantly, it turns out that my teacher in Miami wasn't nearly the perfectionist that my teacher here is. My dance teacher was definitely surprised, and not in a good way. I, too, was frustrated, and a bit embarrassed. I started from the basics, or restarted, I should say.
But after two weeks of dancing and practicing every day, my dance teacher seemed to be both astonished and pleased. She says that unlike most of her students, I am good at correcting the mistakes she points out, and that she thought she could finally actually teach me something. Compliments are not cheap here, but I like that she's blunt.
Now two months have gone by................and I've learned several complicated pieces (yay!). I was all set to start some serious hardcore choreography on the history of bharatnatyam piece that I had planned, when.............I got a fever. For a week. And now my teacher/choreography genius has dengue. And there are some logistical issues.
More later on that very soon, because now I have to run. BUT I did use this week that my teacher fell sick to make a quick 3 day impromptu dash to North India, where I saw the Taj Mahal for the very first time. I was such a tourist, and I loved every moment of it. And thus I can't help but attach this picture.........
Next time, pictures of actual dance. I promise.
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