Quintessentially Kalakshetra
RANEE KUMAR
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Jayalakshmi teacher couldn't think of life beyond Kalakshetra.
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Our teachers were not `professionals' in a commercial sense.
DOWN MEMORY LANE Jayalakshmi relives her days at Kalakshetra.
She is perhaps the last generation of artistes who lived by art, for art and of art. You cannot individualise Jayalakshmi teacher from her dance and her Alma mater — the Kalakshetra.
To be more precise, she never had a personal life on level one and professional life on level one or vice-versa, like anyone of us would boast.
You are perplexed that you have actually come across a fine dancer who has no ambition to gain fame, no claims to tributes or any regrets.
The most unassuming demeanour, a disarming smile that never seems to fade and a humility that allows no room for `me only' identity, Jayalakshmi teacher — as she is fondly referred to by her pupils - is one of the privileged few who shared the stage with the famous Rukmini Devi Arundale, founder of Kalakshetra.
"I am fortunate to have been a student under attai. All of us took to calling her aunt after her nieces, who were her first students, started doing so. She was a wonderful human being and the most intuitive and creative artiste. We were scared of her whenever we made a mistake. Ever since I knew there was a life outside the confines of my home, I was in Kalakshetra learning dance, performing dance and then teaching dance," Jayalakshmi's eyes go misty as they recaptivate sweet memories.
Years rolled by for her and other dancers attached to the Kalakshetra and "we did not realise until one fine day we were told that we had reached superannuation and hence our services were no longer needed by the institution."
She added, "Well, it's not a grievance that I am venting out. It's just that my mind's eye raced back to the days when Rukmini Devi's Kalakshetra was brimming with septuagenarians who were stalwarts in their respective fields of art like Gowri Ammal, Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai and Tiger Varadachariar, whom she would not let go. If Gowri Ammal (Mylapore temple dancer) had a dignified end it was only because of attai. She had her own convictions and would brook no interference on how to run `her baby' (Kalakshetra). I bowed out when it was my turn to retire and here I am helping out all my pupils who passed out of my hands, and established themselves as dancers within the country and abroad whenever I am called for," she says as a matter-of-fact.
For one who loved to be in the shadow of Rukmini Devi and Kalakshetra, Jayalakshmi cannot be judged as a non-entity.
On the board of many a committee on dance at the State and national levels, she refused to toe the line that was contrary to the spirit of dance. "Once I happened to be amongst the panel of judges for dance competitions where I was very incensed by the influence used by one particular school that walked away with the first and the second prizes. I felt that was injustice to other participants and made myself very clear," she recalls.
Bending the rules
Try veering her back to narrating more on her persona and she comes out with, "my life was Kalakshetra.
Our great teachers those days were not `professionals' in a commercial sense. They would call us up in recess and take to teaching us for a full hour if they chanced upon a new interpretation of jatis and we would excitedly dance to the tunes — all this after a full day of nothing but dance, mind you! And attai was like Goddess to us. She would bestow each one of us with a new choreography as a gift on our arangetram after asking us what we wanted. I had asked her for a taana varnam in Naatakurinji and she choreographed it for me.
She was so sensitive to others impediments that she got the stage so adjusted to make it easy for one of our `disabled' guru's (Krishnamachari) to enable him to slide into his position without pain. I couldn't ask for a more worthy life," she signs off.
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