“Addiction in my life? Yes – I have one, from the age of 3.
It’s dancing!
I don’t know if I would have survived if I hadn’t chosen to be a dancer.
As soon as my school was done, the first college that struck me was Kalakshetra. I wasn’t fortunate enough to get into my dream course due to the societal norms of education and career goals.
My family was supportive of my ideas and goals, but however, they wanted me to hold a degree that’s more concrete (and today I realise the importance of one). So, I wanted to take something which is more relatable to dancing, more complimentary to dance. I started pursuing electronic media.
When COVID hit the offline performing artists moreeeee bad, I had no clue to move forward with the digital world, but somehow, I managed to bring the fire on!
I was 18 then and had no career goals except the fact that I wanted to be a dancer, which is/was completely normal. I did not force myself to have one too! But the dancers who grew along with me framed their careers steadily. And their graphs were visibly good. On the other hand, I wasn’t even aware of my next stage.
No career goals, no future plans, no options left, no independent choices – SO WHAT?
I discovered the holes and started working on them. The first one was to market who I was (am).
I started my dance company in 2020 called ’Sri Sai Sahasra’. Worked on tutoring and teaching Bharathanatyam online. Initially, started with a couple of workshops but bringing on people to the regular classes became harder.
There are differences between a dancer, a choreographer and a performer. Usually, people misunderstand these terminologies and relate themselves to too many taglines. I had to establish how I’m fit to be called all 3 of them. I identified my first challenge.
They go hand-in-hand, but it takes a lot of time for a person to become a performer. However, the work is still in progress, and thankful to the people who bestow their support, especially my guru and my family, I’m a step closer to becoming a better performer, choreographer and dancer every day.
During the process of tuning my dance career, I lost so many friends, with whom I was unable to spend time or prove my ideology. But of course, I’m supremely happy about my career now, striving to make better and more conscious decisions that not only benefit me but also benefit the people in my life.
Mistakes happened back to back, but I’m now in a stage to take those phases as my learning stage.
The one thing that I took a lot of time to unlearn was to justify my behaviours or my actions relating to my craft. I understand that one man’s food is another man’s poison. It took a lot of time and guts to understand the industry and address what I struggled with.
The first step to learning is to unlearn.
But when I knew the root cause, how could I not address it? I Gave it a big punch, though! Here I am today, with 25 students in my company across various ages and internationally as well.”
#life #journey #learning #lifelessons #dance #choreography #dancer #craft #family #support #chennai #HumansofMadras