Haema Nilakanta: Transcript

Bharatnatyam Dancer, Ames & Grinnell
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When I started taking Bharatnatyam, when I was little, I started at the age of six. I was taking it as just any other dance. I didn’t see it as anything more than that. But as time went on, I realized how it was part of my culture, how it just sort of showed my Indian side of who I am.

And at points I was very resentful towards it. And I thought it accentuated my differences between everyone else. For instance, all my friends got to wear ballet shoes when they could go to dance. But I wore bells around my legs, and I was barefoot. And I made all the noise behind stage.

My name is Haema Nilakanta, and I’m from Ames, Iowa. I got introduced to Hindu mythology through Bharatnatyam because in the dance style itself, one of the main objectives it has is to present stories to the audience. And these stories are based on the Hindu mythology. Just as in Greek mythology you have stories of Zeus and Athena; in Hindu mythology you have stories of Shiva and Pruthi and Krishna.

So in Bharatnatyam, we would tell or perform stories of this type, such as you would tell a story of how Krishna stole butter or how Shiva burnt the equivalent of Cupid in Hindu mythology.

So Bharatnatyam is a dance drama. Many have used it to present very dramatic stories. And they spend hours on these performances. And it’s just one story, but it also has a component of it which is soley dance, very technical. So it has—it’s very complex in that way.

Bharatnatyam is unique in the fact that there are certain things that you do. There are certain ways that you do steps, and how you hold yourself. Certain ways that when you put your hands in positions, that they entail a meaning. And in fact, it was written in the Vedas. And there, and from there it sort of has branched in its own way.

When I dance—and it is especially an emotional piece—and it is a piece that I have to tell a story, usually as I’m performing, I tell myself the story that I am performing. So if there’s a point at which I have to show anger, I give myself a dialogue that I follow in which I’m saying something that’s allowing me to bring across this emotion of anger, and fury. So I may tell myself, “How dare you do that? How dare you oppose what I’m saying?”  Or if I’m trying to show that I love someone, I may tell myself as I’m showing this action, “You are the most important person in my life. I don’t know how I could ever lose you.”

Dance has allowed me to bridge my two cultures. It has allowed me to explain my Indian narrative to my American narrative, and vice versa. Bharatnatyam has been the way that I’ve done this. And it has taught me how to see the similarities in my two cultures.

I may see them—earlier I saw them as quite different—as in how they were ballet shoes, and how they are the bells that I wear around my ankles. But then they became the ballet shoes that the ballet dancers wore on their feet that added to the whole aspect of the dance. And they became the bells that I wore around my feet, which added to the rhythm and the intensity of my dance form that I do.

So the two have connected, in that way. And I have connected my two cultures that way. And I’ve allowed—and Bharatnatyam has allowed me to connect my two cultures and allowed me to explore both of them in such a way.