Dance as a journey

In a tea house filled with teenagers and skimpily-clad young adults, I try hard to find a silent corner. Malavika Sarukkai arrives like a queen in a gorgeous silk saree, so much so, the staff of the place have already dropped their jaws while ushering her to my table.

Orders placed, we are set to enter what could have been an unending conversation. With Teacher’s Day season this month, no better way to pay tribute than speak of her gurus, one bigger than the other in the field of Indian classical dance.

While Malavika was certainly fortunate to study under such maestros, what kind of effort did it need from her as a student? “My gurus were disciplinarians, but not hard task masters. After a long gap of 15 years, my guru and his wife visited us recently. We spoke about our days of training. Those days, it was more personalised,” she says, recollecting her training under Guru Kalyanasundaram Pillai of the Thanjavur baani (style of dance).

She also trained in abhinaya under Guru Kalanidhi Narayan, hailed as one of the leading exponents of today’s times. “I think it was the eloquence of gesture and precision that I learnt from her. She opened my eyes to that world. A small difference in a hasta makes a world of difference. She was returning to dancing herself in the late 1970’s and through her discovery, it became my discovery,” she adds, reminiscing about her studentship under Kalanidhi.

Malavika continued her dance training with the legendary Guru Rajaratnam Pillai of the Vuzhavoor school of Bharatanatyam. “He was far more casual. He wasn’t a task master or one of those stern older gurus. He was also excited with a new idea. The dance form was just beginning to talk to me. I could hear a faint murmur and understand its depth. I could easily convey these new ideas to vaadyar,” she adds, speaking about how yet another guru nourished her growth.

But gurus come as gurus should. History has been witness to the most demanding of them, especially in the field of performing arts, be it music or dance. Most of them were strict disciplinarians. “Yes. Guru Kalyanasundaram Pillai did expect a decent level of homework. He wanted a certain anga-shuddham. My mother used to sit in his class and transfer all those corrections to me, so it was much easier. But he wasn’t as fiercely strict like my Odissi guru Kelucharan Mahapatra who was very particular about everything. If this hand had to be one centimeter away, it had to be just that. Not less or more! He made sure we were perfect,” she adds, remembering how yet another legendary guru mentored her.

Having trained in the Thanjavur baani, Malavika easily trained under Guru Rajaratnam Pillai in a different style. “Vaadyar was much easier to work with in spite of my eight years of training in Thanjavur baani. If he liked a particular movement on you, he would insist you maintain it, in spite of it being from a different style. He didn’t expect me to change. He was not very strict in those terms. Gradually, I shifted from Thanjavur to Vuzhavoor and over the years, I guess I developed my own personalised idiom of dancing,” she says, on how she managed the feat.

Technique

When Malavika performs, one can see how effortlessly she manages her technique and presentation. But donning the hat of a teacher and a guru is a different deal altogether. “I teach rather intensely. I expect students to have practiced before they come. One is investing a lot of time, energy and self into the transference process. What I would like to do with my students is to inspire them towards excellence. My classes run into hours sometimes.

I cannot do one-hour classes. They have to have the stamina to continue for as long as I want them to. They need to be thinking dancers. They have to have a body-intelligence and work their body on the training. If we have that kind of students, the possibilities to be creative are immense,” she says.

The process of dance-making is exciting, and anyone totally immersed in the art form feels that at some point, be it for a performance or not. “I am not sure now-a-days how much students want to train for training’s sake. Just the excitement of working with your body, discovering its potential and feeling a bit of effortlessness is exhilarating.

We look at Roger Federer and see how intuitive he is and the elegance he has to his style. It has come after years of intelligent practice. I wish dance students also experience that. It is a huge high. Dance is never an event, it is always a wonderful journey,” she adds, urging students of dance to familiarise themselves with the enjoyment of the process. But today’s is a market-driven world and competition is tough.

“It is very important to find teachers who inspire and lift your spirits. You have to be immune to the world around as it is very difficult to wish it away. The only way to deal with it is to stay inspired. That can never be I, me, and myself. You have to stay connected to the cosmos. Dance is an ecstatic prayer,” she says, signing off with some lessons for life for students who are listening out there.