Dance education in the country is a much talked and debated about topic. Few institutions in the country make it to the list of exemplary organisations, which have set trends and contributed to the growth and development of dance. And one of them happens to be Kalakshetra, tucked away in Chennai. Counted among the top dance and music institutions, Kalakshetra has come a long way in imparting the repository of dance and music culture generation after generation.
In January 1936, Rukmini Devi Arundale, an emerging Bharatanatyam dancer, founded the institution and under her disciplined tutelage the institution matured as a dynamic centre for performing arts. Leela Samson, her student and the director of the institute now has brought the institution to the position where it is today. The National Centre for Performing Arts will be celebrating the Chennai-based institution’s journey as it celebrates 75 years of dancing and imparting education in a series of three interesting and informative dance events beginning today until August 27.
Leela Samson, director, Kalakshetra, chairperson of Sangeet Natak Academy and the chief of the Censor Board reflects upon the institution’s journey as a centre of innovation and evolvement. It goes beyond being a dance school, emerging as a centre for organic development of performing arts. “It is a dance school that has a vibrant music and art department and an art unit which is creatively evolving, with an emphasis on the kalamkari work of the South and the dyeing of natural colours on fabric made from flowers and herbs. It has a vibrant and buzzing art and handicrafts bazaar,” she says.
In an effort to not draw parallels between the dance schools in the West and East, Leela says that she isn’t sure about developing our schools along the lines of dance repositories in the West, which are known for their unconventional approach to dance in today’s age. “I am not sure how those work or whether there is one particular model that the West follows, but we have to evolve along our own lines and organically. Dance education has certainly come a long way and more and more institutions are offering dance programmes now,” she says.
However, she hints at the quality of work that emerges as a result of the aforementioned development in the field of performing arts. “We have may various courses and programmes but how many dancers of national merit have emerged from these is a moot point,” she says.
For any institution to survive, funding is one of the most important factors and cultural organization rue the lack of it. “How about getting the corporate world interested? Social structures also support the arts - like the sabhas that run schools and training programmes. The Shanmukhananda Association in Mumbai has many years of solid work in teaching, apart from the performances held in the auditorium, which is also a method of sustaining the arts,” she says. While talking about the ministry of culture budget going underutilized every year, she says, “I don’t have a clear idea. Maybe a paucity of ideas and their execution.”
Despite top cultural institutions having a syllabus and coursework in place, Leela questions the need for a practical approach to dance than just studying theory. “What do we have? A lot of theory and no practice, then why not do a teacher’s training programme instead,” she suggests.
She talks about how Kalakshetra has encouraged students to write research papers. “At the moment we have students writing small research papers. Research requires vast study and the ability to knit facts together. It is left to them to go further down that road. And there is no limit to that, whatever catches whoever’s imagination...,” she says.