Two students' tribute to a dancing legend

Tripti Bhupen and Swagata Sen Pillai will perform in Dubai as part of year-long celebrations marking their famous teacher's birth centenary

The greatest honour for anyone is to be remembered for one's work, even after one's passing away. Rukmini Devi Arundale, who lived from 1904 to 1986, is well-known for her contribution to the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam.

She is acclaimed for uplifting the art of dance to a high aesthetic standard and for providing an institute - the Kalakshetra College of Fine Arts in Chennai, India - of immeasurable value. The college is today a place where the essence of dance, music and painting can be pursued by generations.

In her memory, two devoted post-graduate students of the academy have undertaken to commemorate her hundredth birthday with year-long celebrations. One is Dubai-based classical dancer and teacher Tripti Bhupen, also the director of Samarpan School of Performing Arts in Amedabad, India. The other is Swagata Sen Pillai, director of Kinkini Dhwani in New Delhi.

Both of them have been greatly influenced by their master and have moved on to achieve greater goals in the realm of performing arts.

The two, with students of their respective schools, are giving Bharatanatyam dance performances around the world under their show titled the Smriti Pravah-Centenary Series.

Under the banner of the Indian Association Dubai and The Fine Arts Society, Tripti and Swagata will give a two-fold performance of classical Bharatanatyam and a dance drama at the Sheikh Rashid Auditorium, Dubai, on Tuesday, followed by a performance at The Indian Social Centre, Abu Dhabi, the next day. The programme is by invitation only and is expected to last for two hours.

Tripti and Swagata stgaed their inaugural show in New Delhi this February. They will dance in various countries throughout the year till February 29 next year, which marks Rukmini Devi's hundredth birthday.

"Srimati Rukmani Devi Arundale was a woman of infinite vision and is a legend," says Tripti. "It is because of her that Bharatanatyam is recognised for what it is today, as an art form at the highest social level. My greatest desire is for people to know who she is and what she has done for us."

Rukmini Devi institutionalised dance by combining ideals of Western organisation and education with Indian spiritual and artistic thinking. She established the Kalakshetra in 1936 as a school where art was the core spirit of a liberal holistic education. Her approach and discipline played a great role in the revival of Bharatanatyam.

"There is a great divide between greatness in people who reached new goals, and others who merely took the beaten track looking for a pedestal to climb," wrote Rukmini Devi. What makes her life journey so interesting is that from being a conservative young girl she became such an eminent personality in the art world of modern India. She was encouraged greatly by two theosophists, her husband Arundale and mentor Annie Besant.

With no tradition of dance in her family, Rukmini Devi learnt Bharatanatyam when she was nearly 30 years of age. Her fascination was initially kindled with ballet during her visit to Australia. Over there she met Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova who advised her to study her own classical Indian dances. Thereby began her involvement with Bharatnatyam, the launch of Kalakshetra, and the societal movement of acceptance and appreciation of the Indian classical dance as an art form.

Her contribution in the genre of dance-dramas to the history of classical dance has also been significant. From 1944 to 1979 she produced a large number of dance-dramas based on Sanskrit compositions and important works of mythology which comprises the Kalakshetra repertoire.

She has been rewarded for her pioneering work with India's Animal Welfare Board and Vegetarian Movement as well.

"We want to offer our reverence, awe and love to the remarkable and unmatched artistic genius of Rukmini Devi by presenting a memorable performance in the medium of her choice of expression," says Swagata, who conceived the idea of a year-long and world-wide celebration.

"Our hope is to mark the hundredth birthday of "Attai," as Rukmini Devi is fondly called, by bringing her to the forefront of the minds of art lovers and connoisseurs in the Middle East and the rest of the world," she concludes.