Re: Non Indiandancers

Posted by Marzia on March 15, 2007 at 23:06:03:

In Reply to: Non Indiandancers posted by Megha on March 10, 2007 at 12:56:02:

I must have been about 9 or 10 years old when I first watched an indian classical dancer on tv. I roughly remember it was a slow expressional dance where Goddess Parvati was talking to Lord Shiva, so it was very likely a bharatanatyam padam. At the time I didn't know anything about indian dance because there were not indian classical dancers based in Italy, but that dancer on tv enthralled me....at 11 I started studying regularly ballet till age 24, besides other modern dance tecniques as "Graham" and "Cunnigham". In the late twenties I had the chance to watch again a live solo indian dance performance and again I was fascinated by the style, the costume and the expressional aspect of those items....one of them dealt with an episode of Mahabharata: Dushasana attempt to take off Draupadi's saree which never ended....a couple of years later, an italian dancer who'd studied in the same ballet school I had studied and who trained in Bharatanatyam in Chennai for many years, Tiziana Leucci, held a lec-dem in Rome and then a workshop. I didn't miss the chance to join it because I definitely decided that was what I wanted to do! When I first met my current bharatanatyam teacher, Giovanna Leva, a Yamini Krishnamurthi's pupil, I finally had the chance to get regular bharatanatyam classes and my "indian dance journey" could start.