Bharatnatyam in India

CHAMELI

Please advise a good dancing school in India where its' better to learn Bharatnatyam.
Thank you in advance.
CHAMELI

Nick-H

Best come to Chennai.

Take care not to trip over a Bharatnatyam teacher as you get off the plane

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Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

CHAMELI

so many teachers of bharatnatyam there?
do you know how to get from Mumbai to Chennai?

docgirl2005

Kalashetra in Chennai

Many dance schools in Chennai

You wont have a problem finding one in Chennai.

dani

I've also heard there must be a renowed bharatanatayam school in Mysore. Maybe some other IMer knows more about it?

Nick-H

Chennai is the home and the centre of Carnatic music and Tamil Nadu's classical dance of Bharatnatyam.

Nearly all of the great performers live here. Yes, music and dance schools abound.

Lotus-Flower

Yes, u have at least a hundreds of schools and teachers of Bharata Natyam in Chennai!!

U have an site with all addresses of them but i forgot the link, i have to find it!!

sirensongs

Yes, there are hundreds and they're almost all crooks! and I have the scars to prove it.

PM me for details.

Vasundhara Doraiswamy is the most reknowned teacher in Mysore.

signed, Been there, done that in Madras (not Chennai)

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"Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to lose yourself."
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Lotus-Flower

Yes i know but not really ALL! there is Padma Subramaniam or Allarmell Valli and so on schools where r first class teachers

Adyar Lakshman and so on

one has to ofcourse check it well before running to first teacher!

sirensongs

I said, "almost all."

I did check my teacher, for about six years, before coming to Madras. He was honest in US and a crook in India! Everything changes over here.

Lotus-Flower

It does not have to do anything with honesty
one has to know more about Bharata Natyam
to be able to judge most of westerners have no clue they just want to learn something exotic!

sirensongs

Many westerners are dilettantes who just want to collect another exotic trinket. However, I DID and do know something about Bharatanatyam. It has everything to do with honesty.

For one thing, an honest teacher will not take money from a student for stuff they have no intention of teaching. Wait a minute, I paid you $500 to learn a padam and tillana, how come I've been here 2 months and only learned adavus?

For another, an honest teacher will not promise the moon to a student who doesn't have the ability, just to get extra money. The number of "arangetrams" for totally pathetic students these days is scandalous, all done by teachers out for cash heedless of the quality of dancer they are producing. These poor misled students go back to their countries thinking they are qualified dancers, having shelled out 1000s of USD while being laughed at behind their backs, by their own teachers.

Honesty has everything to do with it.

Padma Subrahmanyam, Alarmel, Adyar Laxman et al may all be very good, but no longer accept beginning students themselves; newcomers are farmed out to their senior students and the new student will rarely see the master. This is true of most of the established masters.

You speak as though you have some experience; I would be interested to hear about it.

Lotus-Flower

500$???!!!!!!!!!!!! u give such a money!!!
so naive?? see thats what i ment one need to have a clue!is this naivity a little bit typical American??
A serious dance teacher would normaly not give such an offer so u need to spend at least 2 or 3 years in hard training in order to get basics!!
and then after that u can "talk" about "varnams" and "padams' and tillana!

but i know there r some guys like that also here in Europe!

Thats what i ment, The Institutions RUNNED by Padma Subramaniam, alarmel and Yamini krishnamurti, ofcourse they dont teach themselves
but its also enough to be taught by their senior students isnt it
even though Adyar Lakshman is still active and also Dhananjayans...

sirensongs

No, it's not. That's what the price is and was, for Italians, NRIs, and so on. For all foreigners. I spoke to several of them myself and that's the price.

In fact, I had already had six years of serious training and according to both the teacher's senior disciple and the teacher himself, I was ready for the other items - More than ready. The stalling was a tactic to get more money out of me. (Hmm, if I take three months to teach her one month's worth of material, I get three times the money!)

Thanks for blaming the victims - me and several others - instead of placing the blame squarely where it belongs - on crooked, greedy teachers. Rather than naive, I think we could be characterized as sincere and trusting - obviously a fault around here. The fact that my American teacher, with whom I'd worked for seven years, completely backed up the Indian teacher's demands shows the depth of depravity in this field.

I'm curious - who were your teachers?

Nick-H

I thought SironSongs would be along to give her experience... and LotusFlower here too!

Bharatnatyam is sold by the pound. A varnam will learnt by someone and resold, but by bit to her students.

It seems also that 'western' prices are readily charged to Western students.....

But, whatever, Chennai is still the spiritual and physical home of South Indian classical music and dance