Ananya Balaji

Young dancer Ananya Balaji is passing the Indian classical dance, bharatanatyam, on to the next generations and she is learning the art while being thousands of kilometers away from her homeland

Words Sebastian Partogi Photos courtesy of Ananya Balaji

Dancer Ananya Balaji may still be an 11th grader, but she has demonstrated a devotion to the ancient Indian dance bharatanatyam. She managed to achieve mastery in the dance while living in Indonesia, far from her homeland India, with the support of a loving teacher and many collaborators.

On Sept. 23, she marked the completion of her training under her coach, well-respected senior dancer and choreographer Janaki Raj Shrikanth, by staging an arangetram — a debut stage performance marking an art student’s final examination — before a panel of judges and a big audience at the Goethe Institut auditorium in Menteng, Central Jakarta.

As a classical dance form, bharatanatyam originated in Tamil Nadu in about the second century AD. It is a dance performed exclusively by women, depicting South Indian religious themes and spiritual ideas, such as the divine realm as well as the creation-destruction cycle.

Artistically, the dance form is known for its incorporation of agile foot movements and its sophisticated use of sign language expressed through hand gestures as well as ocular and facial muscles. The name bharatanatyam is derived from four words: bhavam (expression), ragam (melodic framework), thalam (beats) and natyam (dance), describing all elements of the dance within one all-encompassing word.

For Ananya, the performance marked yet another milestone in her dancing career, which she has been pursuing since she was a toddler.

“At first, I wanted to be a ballerina and even proceeded to learn it for a couple of years. When I was first exposed to bharatnatyam [at the age of 6], however, my interest in ballet fizzled out; that was when I knew what I wanted to pursue,” she said as quoted by IndoIndians.com, an online news portal for Indian expatriates in Indonesia.

The arangetram examination, however, covers more than just an open examination to determine whether an art student graduates or not, it is also a rite of passage of sorts: the Tamil word consists of arangam (stage) and etram (climbing, ascending), marking a student’s official ascent to the public stage after years of training behind closed doors.

This is different from a formal university open examination. Recently, for example, Indonesian dancer and choreographer Eko Supriyanto attained his second doctoral degree from the Surakarta Arts Institute (ISI Surakarta) after staging a dance show called Salt before a panel of doctoral degree promoters and a public audience on July 29 at the Taman Ismail Marzuki cultural center in Central Jakarta.

Prior to this, Eko danced for Madonna during the American pop artist’s 2001 Drowned World tour.

Besides seeking to demonstrate a dancer’s ability, an arangetram also seeks to demonstrate a teacher’s ability to train his or her students to become competent artists. Typically, bharatnatyam teachers also work as the artistic directors and producers of their students’ stage performances. Shrikanth did exactly that for her student’s inaugural performance.

“I went to watch the bharatnatyam performance [in Jakarta] for the first time, directed by none other than my guru. Mesmerized, I realized [she was the one] I wanted to learn it from. My guru is a wonderful, selfless and enthusiastic person, brimming with love and affection; [she] wants only the best for her disciples,” Ananya said.

Learning to dance the bharatnatyam is not easy. Incorporating non-verbal expressions and gestures is one challenge, the physically exhausting practices, which demand dancers’ singular and undivided concentration, however, is another.

Despite the challenges, bharatnatyam helps her to maintain a soul connection to the rich cultural heritage of her homeland, located thousands of kilometers away from where she is now staying: Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. This keeps her going.

“My parents constantly encourage me to stay linked to our Indian cultural heritage, [including] reading Indian epics like Ramayana, listening to Indian classical music while learning to play the  veena [Indian stringed instrument],” Ananya said.

Her links to her culture has helped her to culturally adjust to Indonesia.

Then she proceeded to move to a different segment of the choreography, where she had to respond to changes of lyrical and musical sequences. Here, she put her ability to introduce spontaneity in shifting from one emotion to another quickly depending on the musical transitions.

Artistically, the movement transitions and ever-changing sequences seek to demonstrate more than just an artist’s mastery of her form: they also seek to convey that life on Earth is in a state of constant flux and how creatures cope with these changes, a recurring theme in ancient Indian art forms.

The themes of change and transformation in Indian art also influenced visual artists in Bali who were part of the heavily Hindu-influenced wayang school of paintings, which was apparently brought to the island around the years 10 to 15 AD by Hindu merchants coming from East Java, according to ethnographer J. Kats.

Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Center director Makrand Shukla, himself a dancer who once passed the arangetram test, praised the 40-minute performance.

“Her skillful handling of the stage in her back-and-forth movements enriched and enhanced the [performance’s] whole ambience,” he said.

Her teacher was impressed by her performance; Ananya had graduated and officially ascended to the stage to pursue a career as a performer, a new milestone in her artistic career.

Any artist will tell you that an artist’s path is an ongoing evolution marked by a perpetual learning process. What will be Ananya’s next artistic milestone?

“While deepening [my skills in this] beautiful art form, I hope to venture into other Indian dance forms, kathak and kuchipudi, someday,” she said.

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