Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We're doing Indian classical dance, Bharatha Natyam,
in the form of a dance drama.
And we're going to be following a story about Meerabai,
who is a bhakti yogi, and her love for Krishna,
one of the gods of love,
and following her journey to be with Krishna.
From the age of five, my parents used to take me
to Indian classical dance classes,
and what was supposed to be a hobby kind of developed from there,
a passion for dance grew.
Every couple of years my parents would take me to India to do further training.
I don't think they realised I was gonna go into teaching.
I don't think I realised I was gonna go into teaching.
I think for them it was mainly to learn more about the culture.
This is an opportunity where everyone should be able to take part
cos it's quite a big event.
And it's quite nice to see young children perform as well,
because it encourages them.
But, more importantly,
it's nice to see older students working with younger students as well.
I think the youngest is four years old
and the oldest will probably be around 23, 24.
So there's a really huge variety there.
With Meera, it's not necessarily the fast movements
but it's the facial expressions.
So I knew that I wanted a fairly mature dancer
to express love, to express devotion,
and Sangeetha, when she does perform, her expressions are fantastic.
I have done hip-hop and street, but I like to stick with Bharatha Natyam
because I most enjoy that.
I love the opportunity because I've been doing dance for such a long time,
and doing Meera, it's about Lord Krishna,
and he's sort of my favourite god in Hinduism,
so it's been a very big privilege for me to be doing this part really.
Getting people involved in classical dance is still a little bit of a battle.
I know a lot of my students love doing street dance
and hip-hop dance and Bollywood dance, whereas this is quite a disciplined art.
The music is quite disciplined as well, you know.
You need to be spiritually aware of what's going on
and you should feel it inside, within you, to be part of that.
And I think it's really important that South Asian dance
is featured in Big Dance, like a big event, as well,
because there's so much beauty and so many things
that people, the audience, can learn from South Asian dance.
And not just spiritually, but just like it's an art visually as well
because of the colours of the costumes.
It's just a fantastic project,
and we need the support of the Arts Council for further projects
because it's been a fantastic experience so far.
Captions by internetsubtitling.com