Transcript

00:01 This is Melissa, Hale-Spencer, the editor of The Altamont Enterprise, and I'm very excited about the guest we have today, Sujatha Shareth, and she is sitting across the table from me looking radiant. She's dressed in bright orange with a feather design that has turquoise accents and any of you that looked at our paper a few weeks ago and saw the pictures Elizabeth Floyd Mair took of the Diwali celebration, will understand that these vivid colors are worn by her students. She is a dancer and a dance teacher. So welcomed Sujatha. Thank you. So thank you for having me here. Well, I'd just like to start by asking a little about yourself. How did you become someone who cared about dance and learned how to dance? Okay. Um, I started learning dance when I was five years old. Um, my family has been into arts, mainly music, but my mom was interested in us learning music and dance.

01:13 So that's how I started learning. I learned it in India in a place called touchy of a small town in the state of Colorado. And I was, I've been learning till I got married and after the marriage I didn't think of pursuing this because I had done my master of management studies from reputed college in India. So I was focused on working as a computer consultant and later when I had my daughter, when she was three years old, I realized that, you know, I would love for her to participate and dawn's. And that's when my friend said, you have learned classical dance, you know, Indian classical dance, why don't you start teaching here? And that's how the journey started off teaching dance. Yet it's been six years now that I'm teaching classical Indian classical dance called per diem. Well, I want to hear about this classical dance, but I just like to explore a little about what you said.

02:07 I love the idea that you started doing this because you had a daughter and you yourself as a daughter. We're taught this by your mother. So is that a traditional way to learn dance in India? Or. My mom did not teach me. I learned from a teacher in India, but my mom was very interested in us learning, so she was ready particularly about us getting to learn. Uh, so my family is being endorsed, but my mom doesn't know how to dance, so that's another reason why she wanted me to learn. And did you say that she was a musician or interested in immune system? Interested? Pretty much all our family has, you know, is integral. Nordic music, Indian classical music. So tell us a little bit, and I know that dance in India because I just tried to skim the surface and it's a deep, deep, deep.

02:57 We'll never get through any of it in half an hour, but I know it goes back to ancient times of their cave paintings in India, of, of the kind of dance that's still going on today. So if you could just try, in very layman's terms, describe, um, what, what classical dances like in India? Okay. First thing you need to know about India is that we have many different cultures and many different languages. Every state speaks a different language and every state has its own dance form. So the classical dance that I learned is a predominantly famous in the southern part of India and mostly famous in a state called Tamil Nadu. Uh, the other, the northern part of India, the other classical dance that they learn is called cut book. There is another lance called, could you put it, is many classical dances but better than I do, um, is one of the oldest dance forms that originated and it was said that it was being taught by the gods to everybody by know initially.

04:04 That's how it started. And um, but at the not diem stands for by data not being not your Ms Dance, but at the is part of them Rhogam. Bhava means expressions. Our Gum is Melody Harlem is rhythm. So the dance form has expressions, which means we tell a story through it. We also danced to a particular rhythm and it's usually performed to Indian classical music. So this tradition that it was taught by the gods, does it then have a religious aspect as you're doing it? Is it sort of a form of worship? Yes. Um, it's the Raja is considered the Lord of dance. It has said that he passed on his knowledge too, I mean, it is, of course, you know, according to the scriptures, it was passed onto sage, Nada, and through him that this was also a worship in the temples, the David does. He's used to perform it in the temple, in praise of the lots.

05:07 So this does have a religious aspect to it. Music and dance is considered one of the easiest ways of prayer, you know, a way of offering our services to God. So most of the songs, even what Elizabeth saw that day, right in praise of God or a goddess of Hindu culture. Well, she had the impression and that some of the dances, the girls were actually acting the part of some of the gods. Is that right? Can you just describe to us one example of one of the dances that was done and um, see, for example, they don't, a lot of stories of how the gods help humans or what they have accomplished. So there is a story of a 16 year. Give me a second. Take your time.

05:58 Okay. This might seem a little weird. There are stories of how God saved in elephant. Would that all be too much if I talk to here? No, I think that's a wonderful story. A God's saving an elephant because just before you tell the story, tell about the importance of elephants in the culture. It's not good if you think of something that probably makes because in our culture, unfortunately elephants are just kind of peripheral circus acts as opposed to what I think is every. The elephant autocall was considered a very sacred animals, but let's take some other simple scenario like in Hindu culture, you know that is a goddess called baby goddess part, but each is considered the supreme goddess like a mother to everyone, and she takes the form of pseudo Martini, which means she kills the demon Mahisha pseudo. So in the dance form, we would enact out the scene of the demon and the gardens actually slaying him, and this is celebrated as Nevada Audrey.

07:01 She actually fights him for nine days and she succeeds in killing him on the 10th day. I'm very impressed with that story for several reasons. First of all, that there's a female God that's so powerful because I grew up in a culture that had a Jewish tradition or a Christian tradition where there was a male God. So that's very interesting to me. And I also noticed that, and maybe this isn't true, but all the pictures Elizabeth brought to us anyway, we're all girls that were dancing are they are, they're also boys that do this, that you teach to. I mean, unfortunately I don't teach any boys here, but there are a lot of male dancers who learned to and um, in, in our culture, women are treated with utmost respect because goddess is considered the form of even on earth. UH, India. We treat it as a goddess.

07:57 Mother earth is a goddess. Our India is a goddess. So everybody retreat with that respect. And we have goddesses for different things. Like we have said this with the who is the giver of Wisdom and knowledge. We have luxury who is the best order of wealth. We considered poverty as the best order of courage. So along with male gods, we equally have female guards who we prayed to for strength, for wisdom, for cottage weld, all the prosperity in life. I, yeah, that seems like a wonderful construct that you would have these separate characteristics embodied in separate gods. Um, another thing that just struck me, again, looking at the pictures and the way you're dressed, um, it's wonderful. And in our culture as things seem so almost comparatively drab, can you just tell me a little about the costuming and what goes into that and how your come upon such beautiful clothing.

08:58 Okay. Costume plays an important part in, in our dancing makeup, jewelry and costume plays. An important part of the costume automatically adds to the beauty of the dance. And the makeup is very elaborate as you have noticed, you know, we draw out the eyes, we have really put onto three layers of makeup because the expressions that you show is very clearly depicted when you have that makeup on. In other words, it's like stage makeup. So which emphasizes years your expressions as you make them. But it made those girls who I think were quite young, look, certainly so woman, you know, and you have that as an eyeliner that comes out to the side and the, and also there was one picture of a quite young girl, I think. I don't know what Henna, is it like a Henna because that is one for all auspicious occasions.

09:52 So when you're done, you want to gain your expressions, your hand as we call them gestures to be shown clearly. So we evade those. Um, I mean that is not like a Henna, but it's like a liquid form of a Hannah called me just to give the beauty. You know, what we accordingly, the Indian gods and Goddesses, if you notice all the idols that we worship, they're beautifully decorated because something that is pleasing to your eye, you want to keep looking at it over and over. So automatically when you are dancing, you know your audience eyes don't go away from you because you first thing is it looks very beautiful and the expressions and the posture and everything adds to it. And it also just seemed again from the pictures that the, each of these girls came with maybe a mother or maybe an aunt, they were women that were all like custard around and helping them get ready and it was just such touching scenes because it seemed.

10:51 I had girls that, you know, did tap and jazz and ballet, but they were like separate from the audience and it happened like backstage and then they came on and this team and the pictures anyway for the celebration, like everybody was kind of involved. They were like helping them get ready and like part of the whole experience. Can you just talk a little about that? Yes. I mean you had also asked about the costumes. I get them stitch from India and I have the costumes that I give, you know, reuse it for performances just so that there's uniformity. And regarding what you said, you know, we all, everybody gets together and helps to get the girls ready in. Ymcas just so happened that we did not have a separate backstage. So we just kind of changed right there and got traded. I did. And bitched and yes it made it like a community happening because sometimes some patents and are comfortable doing some part of the makeup.

11:50 So we have bowed, reset, oh we can do this better so we'll help you out. So we all work together. Um, you know, to get the girls ready and get them ready for the dance. It, it is a long process though. It just takes time for the makeup, the costume, the jewelry. So it's fun when we do it together. Yeah. And I bet the girls of and they look transformed that automatically the costume jewelry makeup automatically brings in the mood for you to get into that role of the dance, you know, and you can automatically. I think it just kind of gets them into the atmosphere for the dance. So how many students do you have and what ages are they the lowest level? We started on the age of five, five, six based on the kids ability. And right now we also have a lot of adults learning.

12:42 Oh Nice. Yeah. So I mean as they say, there's no age for art. A lot of them wanting to learn when they were young, but they never got an opportunity and now they are like, okay, this is my opportunity to do something that I wanted to do. So I have lot of adults learning too. We just had our annual day program. Every year we conduct an annual day. Mean had I known I could have invited you there. We had about 140 students performing for the event. Are they all your students? You have 140 students. Wow. Um, I dunno, I was picturing a much more small scale operation. So how many of you teach in the evening? You said how many evenings of week two you teach? I pretty much teach all seven days. Oh my goodness. Wow. So you said your daughter was part of the reason you started on this.

13:37 How old is she now? She's nine years old. And does she still dance? I've wondered what is that like teaching your own daughter? It is amazing. I mean, it's nice to see her show interest and learn and pick up a do good. You know, it is a joy. Yeah. It must be to have that in your own family doing that together. Yeah. So tell me a little about what these classes are like, how long they last and the sorts of things you do in the class. Okay. Usually the classes I had about an hour long and we have them once a week and we started just like anything else you do, you know, like if you were to learn a language, English language, you start with learning the alphabet and then you put it together into small words and then you put it together into sentences. The same day we start basically with a few small exercises and stretches to get your body condition for dancing because just like any other sport, this is also a form of an exercise because we pretty much use every part of our body while dancing.

14:40 So you first have to make sure it's conditioned, you warm up and get it ready and then first few months the children learn what we call our diverse or steps steps. Just like the alphabets. They need to know the basic rules of how your legs should be positioned, your hands, and there are a lot of hand gestures we use, so all these are basic things that are taught. We also teach small, we call them slogans, which is like a two line song or four line song where we try to teach them how to enact. Like if say I want to say come here, how am I going to show it? Tell them to say come here through dance and as she is talking and she's using gestures with their hands that I wish I could describe because they're very graceful. The pinkies extended and you're like drawing towards yourself so you must do that.

15:31 Just kind of automatically is part of how you remembered. When I was younger I used to do it all the time by walking on the road. Made Fun of me, but I guess it's just comes naturally, but they need to know those how to. If a song has a line, they have to explain that line. They need to know what gestures to use. So we start off slow and as when one, once they finished learning, all the basic are diverse, they go into dances, the different types of dances. And this is something that it sounds like they could study for a lifetime. I mean it's. So how. How many years have you been running this school? I've been running the school for about six years now. So have you had students that have progressed from year one all the way up to the six years?

16:19 That must be very satisfying. How many years do you anticipate taking these students? See the journey is different for every child. They'd have been some kids who had already learned from a different teacher who moved from a different country or the state and came here, so they had already had a at a level where they could deadline to a few things. There is something called an iron gate from either engage. A means is climbing onto the stage. That kind of brings a closure to the dance. Your journey of dance. Once you have learned, I wouldn't say eight years only because some children could learn for five years and still need a lot more work to go, but some children can learn for five, six years and get it, you know, so it just basically depends on the child, but approximately around six to eight years.

17:10 Once they have learned dance, we let them perform on stage, a solo performance or maybe with just a couple of them are three girls and we call it in our engagement, which kind of gives you a closure or completion of your bed. Not Jim Dance, I'm learning journey, but that in no way means you're done learning everything. It just means that you are at a level now where you have understood all the basics and you are able to learn and pick up things at a faster rate and you can also get to the next level of maybe even choreographing for an item so that that is what we call as a completion. And we call it a better than our atrium. So once a student gets to that level, and I hadn't understood this until you just now said that she would be able to choreograph something herself, I had in my mind somehow thought these were traditional movements that you know, you learn to follow, but you actually create within this traditional framework, your own way of expressing.

18:16 Everybody has their own creativity, you know, we as a teacher reteach odd way of doing it. But the most important is for the child to learn, to expand on what is being taught. Of course we follow the basic rules for what has to be done, but then bringing in your creativity adds to it. I mean, you do not have to finish another, engage them to be able to choreograph. You can do it even before that, but that kind of gives you, you'd have learned pretty much, uh, all the basics and you learn all the dances that is acquired. So you're kind of at a level where you understand better. Yeah. As you had your parallel, um, way of explaining it, like learning letters than learning words and learning sentences. It's like you can kind of write your own story within a framework, so that's fascinating to me because again, with daughters who took years of this other kind of dance, you are always following as something that was set down for you rather than creating your own, which I, I find that very exciting, especially in the context you said where it can have a religious function because it's, if you're praying it's your own way of relating to this.

19:30 God, I think that's just lovely. So you as a person, as a dancer, do you dance as well as teach and just tell us a little about what dance means to you in your own life. Yes. Identify along with teaching. I mean that fully God's grace. I can still do with that, but I don't know how long weekend Dad's died, you know, a body can only go for him for so long and I don't want to put all this, but uh, yes, I do dance along with the teaching. Um, I enjoy dance. Dance has been a passion and a lot of times before we're going to teach the class, I would be tired. Um, I could be in pain, but once I start teaching on dancing, I kind of forget everything about it. I used to work as a software consultant for a long time before I started actually teaching dance.

20:23 And I remember my husband say is every morning I would get up and say, do I have to go to work today? I mean, can I take an off? Do I really have to go? But since the day I started teaching dance, he's like, I have never seen you so happy. I'm so excited to do it. You know, I would not call this my career, you know, this is, I think is a gift from God. Any art form that you learn, I think is a gift. And uh, I am. I think I'm blessed and thankful that I'm able to choose this as something that I can do every single day and pass on this art form to so many young children. You know, the upcoming generation in your own daughter, my own daughter. Does your husband dance to? No, but he does film your dances.

21:09 He said he supports me in all the other ads. He helps me a lot in everything that we do. Yeah. Well, so do you have any particular goals or visions for the future for yourself as a dancer or for your school and the students that you're teaching? I think the biggest goal is to do justice to what I do and to do my best every single day. You know, the, the biggest goal for our school is to keep the standards high all the time and get my children ready to a stage where that when they go out to college or when they won in future that they can be proud to say that they learned dance and they can use that in their life. We were just joking the other day that maybe very soon once these kids graduate, we'll have branches all over the US setting up their own ways of going.

22:07 Just joking about that. I said, you know, of course they are all incredibly good at their studies and we don't have. This is what they're going to choose to do, but this is something they can always do along with what they do in their, you know, in their fulltime. Cuddyer, what I'm sensing too, and I'm hoping you can talk a little about this, is that this kind of dance, as you say, would continue for the rest of their life. It wouldn't be like a child that went to dance school and then it was over, but also it seems like it's inextricably woven in with the culture. I mean this one festival that Elizabeth took pictures that. Can you tell us about some of the other ways it, it fits in with the rest of your students' lives. Are there other festivals like dwelly that they participate in?

22:52 And can you just tell us a little about what some of them are? India is filled with festivals. I'm not sure if you know, every state celebrate something different. Me Start from the new year. We have something called the festival and baby tank. Uh, the farmers for the harvest be go on to celebrate new years in April. Our new US does not fall in the same calendar year as the US. I mean the English calendar year. So in April at the new year comes in, the new year comes in March. Different states have different new years, so we've performed for that and uh, the temple celebrates a lot of other events like, um, data days which had auspicious to a certain God or a goddess on those days. We perform that is a very important event in September, October timeframe called Nevada three where we celebrate a nine days in praise of the goddess, like I said, the girl and we performed there so we get a chance to perform in various occasions and at the same time a lot of schools in and around the capital district invite us to come and perform for their international day or the day where they celebrate different cultures so they get a chance to see what Indian culture is all about.

24:13 And dance is a very easy way of depicting it for them to understand to what we do. So the children get a chance to perform in a lot of events throughout the year and they enjoy it and enjoy it. So they're like cultural ambassadors. And also maybe you could comment since you've stressed and I think it's important, you know, that India is a multicultural society. What is it like if you have students that come to you here in the United States from different parts of India is is it something that's easy to meld together or do you try to keep distinct the different kinds of things you're teaching them and share and kind of cross pollinator? How does that work? It was a little challenging initially because coming from where I come from, I come from the southern state of India. Like I said, when we speak one language called turmeric, so all the dances that my teacher taught me in that language, which made sense because that's the only thing we did, but coming here, I have children who are from, like I said, various parts of India, so I cannot restrict myself to teaching them.

25:24 When he dances from one language, I had to explore, I had to learn and I had to go out and understand because if I had to choose a song which was not in my language, I first have to go research, find its meaning, understand it, and then choreograph so that I can teach the children and every time I teach it is a little challenging because they don't understand the language either. For them. English is the only thing that comes easily, so we take time to go over what each line means and how they have to express it and how they have to dance it. Because understanding is really important for reporting. It's very important to internalize what you're going to dance so that ants, you know, so it comes naturally so it does a little bit of an extra work with language, with so many languages being involved.

26:15 But it's a fun challenge. I think by now I'm kind of used to it, but how nice for them because then they get a sense of all different parts of India as you teach that. And what I hadn't understood until what you just said is how closely the dance was tied to language. Because when you were talking about music, I was thinking of, you know, tone music as opposed to verbal music. So these dances all come with text or a set of words that is like part of the interpretation. Prayerfulness dad, a lot of scholars and poets in India who wrote a variety of songs. Um, each song was in a different language based on they've bond made them been brought up and they all had their own way of the songs. I'm mostly in praise for God or a goddess and they talk about those gods qualities and ask.

27:10 In the end, they just asked his blessings for them saying, you know, you do so much for everybody. Blessed me to. Or you are the one who protects the entire world, you know, please take care of me too. Kind of a thing. So every song has not just just music, of course music is there, but there is always something called lyrics. The we call it the Linux, so you have to dance to the lyrics. So that is. And those lyrics are different languages based on who the poet who wrote it or who the scholar who wrote it. So that's where the challenge comes in. Helping the children understand what those lyrics are and then having them dance to it in a more to it. Oh, I just love that idea of words taking a physical form. You know it because so often we just think of words on the page instead of having them kind of come to life. Oh my goodness. That's wonderful. I'm just so sorry. Our time has gone so fast. Is there anything that I didn't ask you or something that you want to just conclude with some closing thoughts of what's important to you or. I guess I pretty much shared a lot of things. I think one thing that I'm very time full is that in in a country here that our children from India still want to continue their art, their culture, and want to pursue it.

28:36 I think I have to thank the parents for that because it's very easy to forget where you come from once you come here, but every one of them want their children to continue and learn about their culture, the and we don't want to let it go because it's such a beautiful culture and our society that comes from and the rest of us to learn about it. Well, thank you so much for all you do. Thank you so much for having me and I'm glad I got to share.