Twinkle toes, golden heart
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The transforming power of the arts.
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DANCE AND HEALING Ambika Kameshwar with studemtns of the Rasa Centre. PHOTO: R. RAGHU
Her eyes shine with enthusiasm. She jumps around with her wards at Rasa, a Centre for Theatre and Special Needs, and kisses each one of them to thank them for their hard work. Singing since she was five and dancing since age seven, Bharatanatyam dancer Ambika Kameshwar says she always saw dance as a joy and a power that transformed the personality rather than as just a performing art.
When as a Bangalore schoolgirl she got a chance to work with the visually challenged in a dance performance, this belief was affirmed. Later it became a way of life, and she went on to do a postdoctoral thesis on applying theatre as a holistic developmental tool with special emphasis on people with disabilities.
Regular teaching
Rasa, an acronym for Ramana Sunritya Aalaya, is a school for children with special needs in the mornings and a regular dance teaching institution in the evenings. The seeds of Rasa were laid when Ambika, who grew up in Delhi and Bangalore and later came to Chennai just before her marriage, began working with her future sister-in-law who had started the Chennai chapter of the Spastics Society of India.
"By 1989," relates Ambika, "I had already structured the teaching. The reputation spread by word of mouth and I was working with six-seven special schools. I thought, just one Ambika can only do so much, so I started Rasa. Basically I trained people to work with children by watching me. Five years later, it was time to start a proper structured course."
The postgraduate diploma course designed by Ambika in 1994 to teach special educators in this field is recognised by Mother Teresa University.
Rasa currently has 40 staff members and volunteers and 300 students on its files, of which 100 are on its own rolls and the others at special schools of the city with which Rasa works through its outreach programmes.
Ambika, who trained under S. Meenakshi in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi and has worked with Contemporary choreographer Narendra Sharma as well as dance and drama therapist Barbara Cortez Gray, believes as much in the need for performance as practice in the developmental process. Therefore she makes it a point to include her students with special needs in her productions as far as possible. "The structure of a performance is also good for development," she points out.
The Chennai festival season, therefore, means performing time for them too. This time she presented `Paripoorna Ramana', a dance drama on the philosophical theme of the true nature of the self. A long time devotee of Ramana Maharishi, Ambika approached the deep arguments in answer to the question `Who am I?' in a childlike manner, with a character named I teasing and coaxing the protagonist, played by Ambika, to work out a solution to the dilemma of whether the sentient being who reacts to life situations is really the self, and, if not, how to achieve consciousness of the higher self, who is unaffected by the ups and downs of the material world.
"It's all the grace of Bhagawan (Ramana Maharshi)," says Ambika. "He has kept me in the field, yet insulated from it." Meaning, she performs, choreographs and teaches Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, but is safe from the pressures of competition and the self-centredness, thanks to her involvement with theatre as a therapeutic activity.
ANJANA RAJAN
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Entertainment
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
