backstoryDevoted tothe dancePhotography by Nyla Singh,courtesy Alana RajahAlana Rajah studiedBharatanatyam at therenowned Kalakshetraschool in Chennai30 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
Originating in south India almost two thousand years ago, Bharatanatyam,a major classical dance form, is little known in Trinidad, where most Indiancultural traditions are rooted in the north of the subcontinent. Alana Rajah hasset out to change that. Trained at the Kalakshetra school in Chennai, her goalis to establish Bharatanatyam in her home country — adapting and improvisingas needed. Sharda Patasar learns moreWe are meeting at noon. It’s because shebegins teaching some days at 7 am, andfinishes close to lunchtime. But evenbefore that, she does her own trainingonline with her teachers from India at4.30 am.“It takes a toll, you know,” says Alana Rajah, when in ourwarmup conversation I mention that I am planning on taking acourse that will begin at 4 am, five days a week. “That was howI got injured. At 4.30 in the morning, my body is still wakingup here, while they [in India] are nine and a half hours ahead.Nowadays I am constantly tired.”Rajah’s fatigue is only natural. She has been on this schedulefor the past year. 4.30 am daily online training — the COVID-19pandemic has made travel to India impossible — 7 am departurefor work, 5 pm return home to begin teaching her own dancestudents.“When I told my family that I was going to pursue dance, theyvery honestly told me that it would be a very difficult life,” sherecalls. “My adulthood would be quite a strain, because dancedoes not have that safety net, that financial cushion . . . I valuedtheir opinion, and they were very much correct,” she says, laughing,“but I didn’t feel bad about it. I always felt that I was strongenough to work as well as pursue my career as a teacher andperformer. I prepared myself mentally to work a full-time joband come home to work another full-time job, because it isn’tsomething that we as artists can control. Even though we areborn with a passion, or a talent, or the art within us, it’s a societalfact that it is an industry that does not afford you a luxuriouslifestyle.”Rajah’s chosen artform is Bharatanatyam, one of the oldestclassical dance forms of India, and perhaps one of the mostphysically demanding. “The physical body lends itself to thepractical aspect,” she explains. “We have yoga and kalari. Thoseare two things you learn first to build leg strength to help yourbody become accustomed to the geometric lines or patterns thatmake up the style of Bharatanatyam.”At the Adavallan Art Academy, which she established withthe vision of creating her own dance school in Trinidad, Rajahdoes not sacrifice this aspect of her students’ dance training.Diet and fitness are essential disciplines, even for studentsas young as five years old. “I feel that discipline is somethingthat does not hold true to Caribbean culture or Trinidadianculture,” she says. “It’s something we don’t have as a people. It’ssomething we don’t see even in the highest of positions, fromgovernment to public service to customer service. So, for me, itwas my personal goal to inject that into the society.”And how does she contextualise herself as a Bharatanatyamperformer in Trinidad, where up to today Indian arts are seenas rooted in India rather than Trinidad? “It’s unfortunate,” saysRajah. “All of us exist within the same space, and there are thingsthat lend to the beauty of our culture, our cultural identity, andIndians make up a large portion of that population.”Perceptions of artforms like Bharatanatyam are slowlychanging, at least in relation to the outside world. Socialmedia has been instrumental in the growing awareness of theCaribbean Indian diaspora and its artists. In 2020, at the annualSouth African Indian Dance Alliance’s Global Dance Conference,participants from Guyana and Trinidad were invited for thefirst time, to work with other dancers and share experiences asartists of the Indian diaspora. “We are becoming more embracedand recognised,” says Rajah. “Because even for India, it took along time for them to appreciate dancers of the diaspora outsideof India . . . they didn’t understand the history of Indians beingtaken from India and settling across these various countries andislands. That is a concept that is now settling within their minds.And that appreciation is growing, which I am so grateful for.”In Trinidad and Tobago, before Rajah’s emergence, there hadbeen only one practitioner of Bharatanatyam dance. Under thetutelage of Rajkumar Krishna Persad at the Trinidad Schoolof Indian Dance, a basic foundation was enough to take Rajah ona quest to deepen her knowledge of an artform that dates backapproximately two thousand years.WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM31