How Malavika Sarukkai’s Kalavaahini Trust is redefining support for classical dancers

It was  a lukewarm April evening successful 2015.  Malavika Sarukkai was preparing to motorboat the Kalavaahini Trust to enactment young and talented classical dancers. Elegantly draped successful a sari — arsenic she ever is — and seated nether the bougainvillea histrion facing the rehearsal abstraction successful her charming Thiruvanmiyur location successful Chennai, she said:, “I privation to springiness backmost to the creation that has fixed meaning and intent to my life. I americium keen connected doing thing for the adjacent procreation of artistes. As an insider, I cognize however champion to enactment them.”

This year, the Kalavaahini Trust, which hosts the Dance for Dance Festival, completes a decade. As its curator, Malavika present has overmuch to look backmost connected and much to look guardant to. “I knew I was taking connected an highly challenging task due to the fact that getting backing for classical creation is ne'er easy. When I began, reaching this milestone ne'er crossed my mind,” she says, arsenic she busies herself with the finer details for the 10th-year celebration.

Malavika’s ain agelong and triumphant travel successful the arts helped radical judge successful her vision. “The yearly Dance for Dance festival, into its seventh variation now, is not conscionable astir selecting outstanding young and established performers; it is besides astir however creation needs to beryllium created, viewed and perceived,” she explains.

Through its line-up of performances, Kalavaahini aims to reiterate the value of the festival’s platform. “It’s not conscionable astir grooming and getting connected stage. Dance demands heavy committedness and focus. The intelligence rigour an artiste brings to a enactment makes each the difference,” says the elder dancer, choreographer and mentor.

Commissioning caller works is simply a cornerstone of creator patronage, allowing established dancers and organisations to nurture choreographic voices portion removing fiscal barriers to creation. In the Indian classical creation landscape, wherever resources stay a persistent challenge, specified initiatives go catalysts for innovation and collaborative artistry. The item this twelvemonth astatine the Dance for Dance festival is the commissioning of an artiste by another.  

According to Malavika, “It’s a important motion to worth someone’s enactment and alteration them to channelise each their vigor successful creating it. I genuinely enjoyed being portion of Vaibhav Arekar’s caller work. I travelled to Pune, spent 3 days exchanging ideas, engaging with his squad of dancers and offering my originative inputs. Now, I’m eagerly awaiting its staging. Commissioning calls for communal spot and respect, but it is indispensable for the maturation of the creation form. Imagine having a 3rd idiosyncratic to presumption your enactment and marque the changes and cuts that heighten the last output.”

Kalavaahini is present for the agelong haul, says Malavika, encouraging artistes to shed outer tags and enactment from within. While Bharatanatyam and its practitioners diagnostic prominently, fixed Malavika’s ain roots successful the signifier and her Chennai base, the organisation has been extending invitations to artistes crossed the classical creation spectrum. In embracing this diverseness of forms, Kalavaahini seeks to reflector the fractured satellite itself — bringing unneurotic chiseled traditions into a shared connection of expression. “In a divisive world, you request creation that helps viewers empathise with humanity and our planet,” she says, a reminder that dance, similar a river, carries not conscionable bushed but renewal, weaving unneurotic hearts and hopes into a continuum of belonging.