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Entertainment
Dancing with Dracula... .
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Halifax-based Bharatanatyam dancer Shantha Rao, who once thought the land of Shakespeare and Wordsworth fitted her like a glove, spends most of her energy today in passionately promoting Indian culture in England through performances and workshops. On the road and in the classrooms, ANJANA RAJAN catches up with the whirlwind crusader....
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Shantha Rao... a crusader for Indian culture.
FOR EVERY famous Indian musician or dancer settled in the West, there are hundreds of lesser-known practitioners dedicated to popularising India's classical arts. One such is Shantha Rao, living in Halifax, in the Yorkshire area of northern England, who came as an NRI spouse, is now the mother of two grown-up sons, and in the decades that passed in between, discovered her life's passion -- Bharatanatyam -- and its ability to communicate Indian culture to the people of her adopted country.
A literature graduate from Karnataka, Shantha, who once thought the land of Shakespeare and Wordsworth fitted her "like a glove", is today a crusader for Indian culture, involved in education projects in primary and secondary schools across the region as well as theatre performances. With a packed schedule of lecture-demonstrations and workshops, Shantha's bookings translate into weeks on end of early morning drives on miles of motorways, ferreting out remote village schools where she crams the children's day with images and sounds of India.
There seems nothing that Shantha would not be willing to include in her presentations if it reflects India's glorious artistry -- be it a peacock dance with the real feathers, Bharatanatyam, a Dandiya medley, a percussion ensemble, Kuchipudi, Kathak, textiles, earthenware pots, puppets, or stories from the epics.
Over nearly two decades of presenting such shows she has built up a network of eager clients. No two shows of her company - Annapurna Dance - are alike, since she teams up with visiting or local artistes invited on contract to contribute to her work.
Shantha's school packages can seem simplistic to Indian professionals used to the sophisticated veneer of Delhi's air-conditioned halls or Chennai's all knowing sabha audiences. But they are full of her explosive energy and a response to her perception of the children's - and even their teachers' - ability to relate to a completely foreign culture within an hour. For many it is the first exposure to Indian arts and possibly also the last, but Shantha - trained as a Primary School teacher in England - is certain they will never forget it. Her self-assurance is not far fetched, judging from the appreciative letters she receives, lauding her organisational ability and her "tremendous enthusiasm and energy". "The quality and exuberance of the performance left us all gasping," reads one comment.
Witnessing Shantha planning a workshop to constructively occupy hundreds of children at a time, dancing Dandiya with an elderly gentleman who teaches Maths and getting the women teachers into ghagras and odhnis, the school staff are not the only ones left gasping. Fellow artistes sometimes have their work cut out just keeping up with the tempo. A typical day sees Shantha ferrying a team back and forth from Halifax, one artiste reading the roadmap and another calling out the motorway junctions - with some nervous reminders of traffic lights thrown in - as she talks about her vision of propagating Indian culture far and wide, her animated hands not always on the wheel.
Connoisseurs would agree that Hamsadhwani is a wonderful raga, but Shantha - who has just produced a CD titled 'Namaste, Greetings from India' containing music for Bharatanatyam, folk dance and choreographic compositions with music by Bangalore based composer Chandru - fondly states that she hopes to take it to "every household in Britain."
Shantha is nothing if not passionate, but there are points on which she is disarmingly clear headed. "I am not a great dancer," she emphasises, explaining that she began learning Bharatanatyam in adulthood and has not had the rigorous training she might have liked.
Though proud of her work in promoting awareness and her undoubted talents in communicating with students and the local community, "I know I am not Leela Samson," she declares smilingly, naming a dancer she greatly admires. "That is a post I am not applying for," and then adds with a twinkle in her eye, "- yet ...."
"Learning like a sponge," is how she makes up for the lack of sustained training. Apart from the annual trips to India - where she trains under illustrious gurus like the Dhananjayans among others - Shantha has a hawk's eye for learning opportunities, whether in the form of practice sessions under the guidance of a guest dancer, a choreographic piece created by another, or simply, stories from the epics or a style of recounting she may not have yet come across, picked up from an artiste she may be working with at the time.
"I am a very fast learner," says Shantha, and adds cheerfully, "You give me a finger and I will eat up your hand!"
The local Yorkshire press has been full of praise for Shantha's past productions that include "The Ramayana" - a collaboration with shadow puppeteer Diana Bayliss of Black Cat Theatre, "Indian Monsoon," and "Colours of Indian Dance".
No doubt, this season's "Namaste, Greetings from India" based on the CD - with guest artistes including Vyjayanthi Kashi, Ayyavu Ravi and Sandip Mallick performing Kuchipudi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak respectively, along with Bangalore based Arun Kumar and Calcutta based Debasish Mukerjee on mridangam and tabla - will be just as warmly received.
But Shantha will soon have left it behind as just another milestone in an insatiable quest, because, in her own inimitable words, "I am a Dracula for dance!"
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