Loving Every Post-arangetram Minute

It's been 2 months since I finished my arangetram, but I'm only now starting to feel like I've established a post-arangetram routine - and it's amazing! It's everything I dreamed having 2.5 hours of my day back would be. Ed and I have been pretty good about going to the gym to do our women's weight lifting routine (have I mentioned that Ed is a really good sport about everything?). This weekend, I finally bought a new pair of outdoor running shoes - a mere 8 years or so after I bought my last pair, and tried them out today doing a wuss "run"*. It's the first time I've been excited about running in years. Also today, I got my bike pedal restored, which had been broken since the week of my arangetram.

This is what freedom looks like

What's even more amazing is that I went to dance class for the first time since my arangetram and I truly enjoyed it. I had practiced a few times over the summer, but I was so burnt out that I was not feeling it. Yesterday, however, I was really happy to be there, something I hadn't felt in probably a year. It's great to be back!

* wuss run: An athletic activity wherein the participant alternates between walking and jogging, switching as the song on said participant's audio apparatus changes.

Downsizing and Appealing Head Shapes

What's the number one thing every dancer does immediately after her arangetram? Chop off her hair. In my case, it was item 9 or 10, but I finally got around to it. The results:

Finally!

This is my first for real hair cut in... basically since I moved to California 4 years ago. I'll get a trim every year or so, but that's about it, and even then, it's like a $25 hair cut. Once I got to dancing, I needed my hair to be long to facilitate braiding. I also couldn't have layers because they're a nightmare to braid with.

This time, I went for an unheardof $75 hair cut at my boyfriend's hair salon. Yes, that old cliche of the boyfriend who wants his lady to spend more money on hair care. I rolled with it, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

In addition to the nice hair cut I was also complemented on the height of the top of my head. That's a new one, but I'll take it!

Not Me!

I've been a bad blogger for the last three weeks. Since I finished my arangetram, I've wanted to distance myself as much as possible from my arangetram and all things arangetram. Not because I'm not happy about my arangetram or anything - not at all. It was a wonderful experience. But I'm still exhausted and trying to figure out what my life is going to be like without 14 hours of dance a week.

Yesterday, I helped out at the first post-Emily's-arangetram arangetram. It was pretty great! For one, I was totally relaxed. Even at the other arangetrams I helped out at before mine, I was stressed out because I knew my time was coming. This time, I had already done my bit, so there was nothing to stress out over.

The Other Side of the Game

I was really happy to help out at yesterday's arangetram. The dancer, Keerti, helped me out a lot during my performance and stage rehearsal. She was very calm and collected, and her sister had done her own arangetram years ago, so her family was also very chill. This is a rarety in the business, I assure you. She did a great job and I'm very happy for her. Also, still happy it wasn't me this time :)

It was also nice to watch the show with my fantastic boyfriend, who was wonderfully dressed in a silk kurta he purchased himself in Bombay. I feel like we fit in. However, one of the dancer's uncles asked me if I was Keerti's classmate. I said yes, originally thinking that he meant her dance classmate, but later when he referred my boyfriend as her classmate as well, I knew we'd had a misunderstanding.

New accomplishment: I am more convincing as an 18 year old than as a Bharatanatyam dancer.

This week, I'm striving to do a better job of updating the blog. Stay tuned for posts of video clips, more pictures, and how I got into Bharatanatyam in the first place.

The Rundown

I know, I know, I'm very slow at getting any follow up from the show. But after half a year of preparation, I feel a day or two is an acceptable waiting period.

Overall, the whole performance went really well. There are, of course, things I wished I'd done better - adavus I didn't have the kind of form I'd like to have, occasional hunched shoulders, etc, but I think those are all outweighed by the things that went as well or better than I'd hoped.

By some miracle, I can do a reasonable version of real Bharatanatyam expression! This is really something I never thought I'd get. Dance steps and stuff aren't that different from any other artistic athletic activities, and although still hard, I didn't feel like there was a real barrier to learning. Expression, however, is sooo tied to culture. Most of the girls I dance with have had their whole lives of watching their grannies and TV and absorbing all that so that when it comes time to dance, they have so much to draw on. I, on the other hand, am rich in Irish curse words, but poor in any kind of Indian expression.

Somehow, I've got it together, and the only strategy I had was practice, practice, practice. I guess I did have some natural inclination - as Radha's father put it, "She has big eyes and an expressive face and will go far in life". Indeed, Mr. Sadogopan! But more importantly, unlike rhythmic dance, I could practice expression in the mirror in my room without special space, and so I did. And I guess that paid off.

The other thing that went really well is so many people showed up. My parents, sister, Aunt Jane and Uncle Jerry, friends from Canada Krista and Sharvil, Gaby from NYC, tons of colleagues from work, even more families from dance, and even members of the community who just came by to check it out. It was so awesome! Thank you so much to all of you who came - I hope you all enjoyed the show.

For those of you who missed it, here are some highlights courtesy of my Google team mate Matt Dunlap...

Through the whole process, my Guru Shrimati Mythili Kumar has been amazing and very supportive. I never imagined getting to this level and I thank her for challenging me an believing in my abilities despite the odds. Thank you to Anjana Dasu, my amazing student mentor, who has her own solo show Sunday July 21st at Hoover Theatre that you should all watch! Thanks as well to Lakshmi Venkatesan and Megha Ranganathan for teaching me parts of my repertoire.

None of this would have been possible without all the amazing work the volunteers at Abhinaya contributed. Thank you so, so much to Kjirsten for her helping masterminding it all, to Dinesh Belwalkar for coordinating AV, to Sheelu and Prema Aunties for doing an amazing job on my make up and hair in spite of my complexional challenges - it was very entertaining to hear the discussions that went like 'something something illa white person something something'. There were many many others who all contributed so much - thank you all!

Finally, to my boyfriend Ed and all my friends, thank you for staying with me in spite of not seeing me much for the last few months. I'm looking forward to spending quality time with all of you this summer.

Tomorrow: The Big Day

Last night I finished the final orchestra rehearsal. It was rough, but much better than the stage rehearsal I had on Tuesday, for which I was completely stressed out and exhausted. For the final rehearsal, I was less stressed, and had made an effort to stuff myself with food in the lead up. Now, I'm relaxing, and maybe doing some last minute practice reviews, but mostly, I'm trying to get my mental focus to maximize the awesomeness tomorrow for you, the audience (hopefully).

She's pumped, are you??

For those of you who are on the fence, let me reiterate what's in store for you tomorrow:

• An incredible two hours of action-packed live dance and music!
• Delicious authentic Indian snacks served at intermission!*
• An amazing chance to wear Indian clothes!
• Participate in the happiest clash of cultures ever!]
• It's 100% FREE!

There might be rumours floating around about needing to buy me gifts, but do not be persuaded! Such stories are FALSE!

If you are completely compelled to buy something, you can give a donation to Building Skills Partnership, an NGO that runs English language and computer skills training to janitors and other support staff working around the Bay Area. I've been working with them for 2 years on their Google-based projects, so I can vouch for them as a solid organization.

Thanks to Erin, Adam and Eliza for the amazing fan pic :)

* If you are Gaby, you will instead have delicious authentic gluten-free cuisine.

T minus 1 day!

The Parents have landed!

This afternoon, my parents arrived in the Bay Area. They are staying at a fine establishment in Sunnyvale, close to the heart of the action. I felt bad about not having them stay with me, in spite of the tinyness of my place, but given the current state of my apartment, I thought it would be best.

No Country for Old Parents

Now that they're here, it's another sign that I'm getting closer to the big show. It's nice to have some more cheerleaders around, even if they don't entirely understand what's going on.

T minus 3 days!

What's in a Thillana

In continuing with descripitions of my pieces completely out of order, I will now discuss the Thillana. A Thillana is usually the concluding piece in a Bharatanatyam recital, as well as in carnatic music concerts. It involves mostly nritta, or straight up rhythmic dance. Given that it's the end of the show, it's a real killer.

Fortunately for me, I quite like my Thillana. It is in ragam Dhanasri - ragams are kind of like 'keys' in western music, as best I can tell - which is a really cool ragam. To hear a weird version of what it sounds like, view below (my orchestra will NOT be featuring a saxophonist or a morsing player).

Unlike most thillanas, which only have one line, mine has 3! Originally, this meant I was totally dying by the end of the 15 minute piece. We have since shaved it down, so it's a lot shorter, but it still has 3 different lines.

While most of the dance is just 'dancing' (ie: no miming), there is a single verse at the end describing Lord Krishna Padmanabha (a mistake I made in the first draft of my program), who is one of the lesser-celebrated incarnations of Lord Vishnu. He has a subpar wikipedia page, so all I can tell you about him is what I know from my thillana, which is that 1) He is an incarnation of Vishnu, 2) He is playful, and 3) He removes ones troubles. Frankly, I feel I can be forgiven for mixing him up with Krishna.

The line at the end of the Thillana, and all of them have one, always strikes my as a strange artistic choice. You're going along, perfectly logically, dancing your exhausted little heart out, and then BAM! storytime. The only western equivalent I can think of are the kind of music video that will suddenly cut from a song into some out of nowhere story that you never saw coming. A classic example, perhaps a little dated for you young folks, is Puff Daddy, Ma$e, and the disembodied posthumous voice if Biggy Smalls' Been Around the World, where we we go from perfectly coherent ballin' about the Middle East to... salsa dancing with Jennifer Lopez.

Huh?

The Thillana definitely does a better job of this genre in that it doesn't involve Ma$e. And hey, who doesn't want to hear a story about the gods? If you didn't, surely you would have left by now.

T minus 6 days!

Practice makes long weekend seem longer

Today was the first day of my 4 day weekend - which, of course, would be a holiday, but for dance practice. Unfortunately, my mind and body both think it should be holiday time, so focusing on practice today was like pulling teeth.

First, I memorized the demo for my varnam. A demo is the description of a Bharatanatyam piece that the performer gives before the piece, including gestures from the abhinaya. This is particularly useful to audience members who aren't familiar with Bharatanatyam since it explains what the miming gestures in the piece mean. At any rate, as of this morning I hadn't memorized any demos, so I have some work to do. Now, I've got 1/4!

After that, it was time to straighten out the tattimittu for my varnam. These are the final rhythmic steps before the end of the varnam that accompany the miming gestures that tell the last part of the varnam story. Performing them is a bit like patting your head while rubbing your tummy - you need to divorce what your feet are doing from what you're hands are doing. For me, the divorce has yet to be finalized.

On the upside, my physical therapy is going really well. My clamshells got upgraded to crab walks and my heel taps are elevated to the height of a full step. Also, my IT band has loosened substantially. When I started foam rolling them (see below), I was on the verge of tears with the weight of only one leg on the roller. Today was the first day I did full two-leg rolls with totally bearable pain. Success!

What's up IT band!

So things were looking up, until the last 5 minutes of practice and the skin on my left big toe split.

WTF??

This is definitely a mode of failure I hadn't anticipated. Surprisingly, it doesn't hurt that much, and can be easily covered with a bandaid. Hopefully it won't impede the last week of practice.

T minus 7 days!

First Orchestra Rehearsal

Last night I had my first orchestra rehearsal. There was a lot of learning to be done - it was the first time seeing microphones and mixers set up, the first time performing with the mridangam and violin, and the first time going through everything with a braid, spetum clip, and other uncomfortable costume pieces.

For those who are outside the Bharatanatyam world, let me explain why these things suck. The braid is like two pounds of swinging junk attached to your head. I got a cramp in my back at one point for the extra weight pulling my head back.

The septum clip is a new one for me. It's not something you typically wear in a run-of-the-mill group performance. In part, that's because everyone hates them. A lot of people find them uncomfortable because they pinch the inside of your nose and make you want to sneeze. I didn't have that problem. The other problem (which I definitely had) is that it's a wick for sweat and nose-products that drips down right into your mouth. Ewwwww!

Why do people choose to wear these?

I also managed to bruise my shin with my bells. Normally, the problem with bells is that they give you blisters. To avoid this, I tied them really tight, and came across this alternate failure mode. I hope the swelling goes down before Tuesday when I do my stage rehearsal.

I couldn't drink enough water to replace what I was losing. My saree was completely soaked by the time I finished. I drank as much as I could once I finished, but I still woke up feeling like I had a hangover in the morning. And I have to do this (and worse) three more times. OMG!!!

What's next? For the long weekend, I'm sequestering myself in the south bay to focus on dance and avoid undue driving back and forth. Last night, I stayed with Kjirsten and family in Fremont. As much as I love the city, it was very peaceful falling asleep to the sound of crickets.

Now, I'm staying in my "Gsuite Mountain View Getaway" apartment. For those non-Googlers, Google offers up their corporate apartments for free on weekends to employees if they're available. Since who would stay in Mountain View by choice on a long weekend, there was space available! So here I am.

No SF, but could be worse

Today I didn't practice because I was completely exhausted. Tomorrow, however, no excuses. And, hey, what else am I going to do in Mountain View on a Saturday?

T minus 8 days.

Sleep and the Final Stretch

Last week was rough. A combination of things, some physical (new physio exercises made my legs hurt during practice), but mostly mental, made me completely exhausted. A big problem was falling asleep. With looming rehearsals and performance, there's so much to get done. So in spite of being absolutely exhausted when I went to bed, I was consistently awake for another 2+ hours running through all the random tasks to get done the next day. Not cool.

However, by the end of the week, a lot was settled. I got a videographer and photographer booked last week, and Kjirsten settled the food. All are costing me more than I'd estimated, but I'm not quite in the poor house yet. I hope my future children weren't planning on going to college*. I also watched and helped out at the last arangetram before mine. Strangely, I felt less stressed after it was done despite a lot of 'OMG are you READY?!?!?!' inquiries. No, I'm not ready. But I will be in two weeks. Please keep your pants on.

I also got through my first couple of last-mile practices with my Guru. They have gone extremely well by my standards. There's a lot to improve, but nothing that warrants panicking. I had my first rehearsal with my vocalist: the wonderful Sindhu Natarajan! I had a lot of fun. Dancing with live musicians is always so much better than with recordings, plus Sindhu has one of the most gorgeous voices I've heard. I'm getting excited for my show.

So there's a lot more crazy to come. First orchestra rehearsal is tomorrow, then stage rehearsal Tuesday, then final orchestra rehearsal next Thursday, plus a whole lot of practice in between. However, Friday is my last pre-arangetram day at work, and I'm staying in the South Bay this weekend, so I feel like a lot of the build up stress will be mitigated by having a single focus. As well, my boyfriend is back on Monday, my parents arrive on Wednesday, and my sister and the Gaby arrive on Friday. So much to look forward to!

T minus 10 days.

* Of course, they will always have the more affordable alternative of University in Canada.

Where for art thou Rama? Also, my friends are too small.

One of the intents of this blog was to post detailed descriptions of each of my pieces. So far, I've managed to cover 2/7. Emily FAIL. In the spirt of catching up, here's a description of my javali.

First off, a javali is a love lyric, generally told by a longing nayaki (maiden) searching for her nayaka (lord). This might sound familiar because, as I explained earlier, varnams usually express the same theme. However, since my varnam rejects this old chestnut, it was time to get my lusty maiden on.

In my javali, the nayaki is lusting after Rama, the 7th avatar of Vishnu notoriously lame husband by most accounts (see Ramayana).

Remember what they say about Gods with large bows

In spite of him forcing his wife through fire and still kicking her out of their home, this nayaki considers him quite a catch. She waits and waits for Rama to show, but no dice. Instead, she finds her friend and asks her to go find her Rama and tell him of her suffering, because everyone knows nothing attracts a guy more than abject desperation.

Why is she so into him? She thinks he's quite well-spoken - this will come up over and over in the piece. He's also a good singer and some other stuff. Oh yeah, and he's awesome in bed. I kid you not people, this is literally a line in the piece. Cover your children's eyes because otherwise there are going to be some questions.

After performing this for my student teacher for the first time, her major criticism was: your friend is too small. Apparently, I was persistently talking to a person who was clearly a foot shorter than me. Thus, from now on, I order all my short friends (you know who you are, Radha and Lakshmi...) to stand on stools of at least 6 inches in height when speaking to me. That is all.*

T minus 15 days.

* I blame my approach to this problem on Judge John Hodgman.

Raising a Small Army

It turns out that the secret to a good arangetram is to convince others to the work for you. Granted, this only goes so far - I have to do the actual dancing myself, of course. However, just about everything else can be offloaded to others. When you have parents arranging an arangetram, this is obvious since the organization of the event is your sole focus, aside from feeding, housing, and chauffering the talent. In my case, I have been almost entirely focused on the dance part (and my job, and the usual chores of life) and basically ignored the organizational side. With one month to go this is no longer an option.

Enter Kjirsten, my pseudo-parent in shining armour.

Artist's Rendition of Kjirsten

Like Krishna leading the Pandavas and all those other guys, Kjirsten has taken up the cause of organizing my sad mess of an arangetram. So far, she has gathered a ton of volunteers by asking each person inidividually, and outlined all the tasks we have to do for the day, which at the moment is somewhere around one bajillion things to do. She is a rockstar, as are Savi, my classmate and Kjirsten's daughter, and Kjirsten's husband Vikram.

To give you a sense of all the things that need to be done, here is a highly abridged list:

• Lighting for performance
• Sound for performance
• Video for performance
• Photography for performance
• Make up
• Hair
• Costume Changing
• Sweat Dabbing
• Food for volunteers
• Food for guests
• Food for orchestra
• Transportation for special elderly guests

And so on and so on. I didn't realize how screwed I was until Kjirsten kindly asked whether I had volunteers for all of the above tasks. I stared blankly. Aside from laziness, the problem I have recruiting volunteers is what I would like to term caucasian shame. Basically, my people* don't have much of a tradition of calling on random people to help with work, especially ostentatious dance recitals. When you and your neighbour can't agree on which version of Jesus to believe in, how are you going to ask them to help you pick out snacks for your friends?

So now there's a ton to do, but things are getting done. Kjirsten, THANK YOU!

* You might notice my liberal use of the term 'my people', and confusing context switches where 'my people' transition from Canadian to Irish to Indian to *gasp* American all in rapid succession. You have observed correctly.

Road to Recovery

On Friday I had my first physiotherapy session on Friday morning. Naturally, this is physiotherapy offered at Google. I had been waiting for 6 weeks for my initial appointment, which I scheduled the day after I originally hurt my knee during the photo shoot. Although my knee has since improved, it still gives me occasional trouble, so I was excited to get some expert advice.

Within a few minutes of simple physio tests (lift this, bend that, etc), the physiotherapist had a fairly certain diagnosis: I have zero hip strength. This is not what I was expecting. The turnout for our dance posture is pretty dramatic, and I have no idea how one does that without hip strength to keep one's legs pried apart. Apparently, the other way to do it is to put a lot of torque on one's knees.

I've been given one simple set of exercises: clam shells. This is where you lie on your side, with heels pressed together, and lift the top knee off the bottom knee while your legs are bound together with a theraband. I was started off with the wimpiest theraband tension and I can still barely get my knees apart. This is me trying my most hardest:

We'll call this The Before Shot

Note that that shot was taken on the 3rd day of doing exercises. The therapist says that it will take a couple of weeks to notice a difference, and by 6 to 8 weeks I shouldn't have to do them anymore since once the muscles are activated I'll be using them all the time in dance. I'd say this is very good news, though it would have been nice to have 6 weeks ago.

Into the Deep End

zOMG what a crazy weekend! In addition to the usual practice practice practice, I had invitations to package up and ship out, blouses to hand off for stitching, and a Shriya to help out for her arangetram. By Sunday night I was more tired than I was Friday night, which for me is very unusual.

It all started promptly at 10:30am when I got to my practice space in the city. I was exhausted, but man is it cool to have a big open space, with cushy nice dance floors, in the heart of the Mission.

A little piece of heaven

Practice itself, however, was brutal. I've fallen a little behind in my stamina practice, so it was hard doing the second day in a row. I was amused when someone came in and asked if this is where the hip hop class is. Umm, yeah... Just getting ready for my role in the next Lil Wayne video. I hear he's really down with Vishnu.

After a shower and a quick brunch, I roped my sister and boyfriend into helping me package up the 150 or so invitations I had to send out. It took longer than I thought, but before dinner we had it all done.

So much for having my apartment cleaned last week

Another unanticipated problem: apparently, 150 envelopes is not something you just dump in your corner mailbox. Sigh. So I had a trip to the USPS office near my place on Monday to get the invitations on their way.

Finally, Sunday, all day, was arangetram madness. This was my first time helping out back stage at an arangetram.

Where the magic begins

I can't believe how much stuff there is to do. It takes like 5 people just to get the performer's make up on. I have no idea how my arangetram is going to happen. On the plus side, dancing for 2 hours in front of everyone I know seems so simple compared to all the organizing and preparation that needs to go into getting the performance together. So at least I can fall back on that...

Appealing to the Google Masses

Today is exactly one month from my arangetram date. Things are heating up!

In that spirit, I presented a talk to my colleagues (at least the ones willing to come out and listen) about my arangetram. I don't think anyone in the room had been to an arangetram before, aside from my boyfriend, who came with me to one last month. Actually, that might not be true since during the tech talk several random Indian Googlers who I don't know logged in to watch. Awesome! The word is getting out...

If you don't work at Google, you can see the slides for the presentation.

The Real-life Print Shop

When I was in elementary school, one of my favourite computer 'games' was called 'The Print Shop'. It wasn't technically a game - it was a tool for building stationery, greeting cards, and posters. Nothing spells fun to a 10 year old like paper product design! But for me, it was hours of fun.

Today, I got to visit a real-life print shop for the first time to get my arangetram invitations printed. After weeks of photographs and editing by my amazing graphics ninja sister, it was time to get the real thing. The owner of the shop was more than happy to geek out about the technical specs of the $6K machinery used to print out my hopes and dreams.

The Dream Machines

After some layout editing and image touch ups, my invitations were off. A few hours later, I picked up 300 of the final product.

Watch your mailbox!

Stupidly, it only occurred to me today that I should get the other invitation fixins (envelopes, stamps, etc), some of which is going to take a while to get here via amazon. With any luck, invitations will be in the mail early next week. Expect your's soon!*

* If you're in Canada, you'll probably need to wait a while longer if Canada Post goes on strike. Sorry!

Dodged a Bullet

Just as I'm settling my crazy schedule for the next month in the final stretch before my arangetram, I arrive home to this:

Dun dun! Called to jury duty! The week of my arangetram! OMG!!!!


This is one of the pitfalls of adult arangetrams. When you're 14 or 15, getting called to jury duty is a non-issue. Fortunately, it's a non-issue for me as well since I get to pull the ol' foreigner card:

 
Amazingly, 'preparing for my arangetram' is not one of the disqualifiers. So this is one time I definitely caught the long end of the stick. I can't imagine having to deal with being stuck in court, especially the day before my arangetram when I really need the day off to chill out and not think about anything.

A Room of One's Own, every Saturday from 10:30am-12:30pm

With my final month of training looming, wherein I am supposed to rehearse my entire program every day, I decided it was time to find a space in the city to practice in on Saturdays to avoid schlepping to the south bay for at least one day a week. Starting next week, I'll be back to working in Mountain View every day of the week since I'll have interns to tend to, so having a day when I don't need to commute is extra important.

After a week of researching spaces, e-mailing and calling, I finally heard back from a place that happens to be the closest to my house. The venue is Dance Mission Theatre and they run 3 dance spaces that are generally used for dance classes and occasionally rented out anyone who needs the space.

Considerably closer than Mountain View or San Jose

It's about a 5 minute walk away, so I don't have to worry about carrying all my crap far and I won't even need a change of clothes since I can get home very quickly. It's $20 an hour, which is the same or less than I would spend getting a Zipcar or gas+parking+break-in's for my boyfriend's car, plus I save 2 hours of my life from driving which is worth a lot to me at this point.

The Dances of India: A Primer

This is an issue that has come up 3 times in the last week, and I now realize that for people new to Bharatanatyam, this is not obvious. So allow me to clarify:

Bharatanatyam is not a social or recreational dance. What you're thinking of is Bollywood and/or Bhangra.

The simplest analogy I have: Bharatanatyam is to Bollywood as ballet is to swing dance. Bharatanatyam is not something you pick up in a few classes to have some fun moves to show off at a night club. It took me 3 months just to be able to sit in aramandi, the basic stance. More non-Indians than not have told me that the neck movements of Bharatanatyam (called atami) creep them out, so this is definitely not the sexy-town attraction dance you're probably going for.

To further clarify, here's a brief and incomplete run down of the dances of India:

Bharatanatyam

Obviously, the best form of dance from India.

More seriously, it's a form of classical dance, meaning the movements are precise and highly organized. It has both prescribed steps and a whole vocabulary of expression and gestures to communicate with the audience.

It is from the state of Tamil Nadu

It's highly religious in theme and is held in very high esteme within the Hindu community.

Rama Vaidyanathan: Badass of Bharatanatyam

This is not a dance you do for kicks at a club, although I kind of want to try that sometime. It's also definitely not something you dabble in.

Bollywood

As my dance teacher describes it:

"an amalgam of classical, folk, popular dance, western movement, etc. where anything that the director pleases is adopted"[1]

It's mostly for fun. It's not about precision or exact positions. It's the Indian equivalent of hip hop, and increasingly, includes a lot of hip hop.

If it's on a train, it's definitely Bollywood

When people ask me where they can learn some of the dance I do to perform at the first Indian wedding they're attending, this is usually what they're mistaking Bharatanatyam for.

There are lots of classes in Bollywood all over the Bay Area and everywhere else, but I don't know anything about them beyond that.

Bhangra and other Indian Folk Dances

Another increasingly popular form of Indian social dance is Bhangra. It comes from the Punjab region in India/Pakistan and has a lot of characteristic shoulder shaking. The 'pet-the-dog-and-screw-in-the-lightbulb' is Bhangra.

There are other forms of folk dance. Garba is another popular one. It comes from Gujarat, a Western state that's next to Punjab, and there are big Garba events everywhere there are Gujuratis, including the Bay Area. Dandiya is another Gujurati folk dance, but it involves sticks.

Other Forms of Classical Dance

There's pretty much a different classical dance for each region. Some of them are similar to Bharatanatyam, like Odissi and Kuchipudi. They are both from states near Tamil Nadu (Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, respectively).

Kathak is a form of classical dance prominent in the north. It's similar to some of the dances of Persia and the middle east. It's more upright and involves a lot of spinning (think Whirling Dervishes).

Kathak sequence from Devdas

Possibly the least like Bharatanatyam is Manipuri. It comes from the north east of India (near Tibet) and involves drums and acrobatics.

I hope this clears matters up.

Coconut Water FTW

This morning I was reading the new issue of Dance Magazine. It features an article on the benefits (and some myths) of coconut water. For those of you unfamiliar with Dance magazine, it's pretty well-written, and their sciency stuff is backed up with reputable experts, although as with any fitness literature, it's certainly not universally true for everyone.

With that in mind, Dance Magazine's conclusions on coconut water are:

• Terrific source of hydration while performing or training
• Not as good as plain water when you're looking for a liquid to consume outside of performance
• Coconut water cannot prevent or cure cancer

Basically, it confirmed exactly what I understood. I first started drinking coconut water during sports after reading the only vegetarian athletic guide I've ever found. (While technically the book is for vegans, the only 'vegetarian' athletic diet books I could find suggested supplementing meals with vegetarian staples like chicken - umm, no thanks).

The book suggested coconut water as a lower-calorie electrolyte-replacement (as compared to gatorade or even regular fruit juice). It also claimed that coconut water is the sports drink of choice for many an attractive South American soccer/football/who cares player. I'm sold!

Even Shiva has Knee Problems

The first piece of my second half, a kriti I think (but don't quote me) called Kalmari Adiya, is not my favourite piece. Don't let that discourage you from coming to my show - it's quite fun to watch. As a dancer, though, it is one of the most demanding pieces for balance and strength because it's about Shiva and full of his poses. Shiva: the God of destruction, original Lord of the dance, and a bit of a pothead[1]. He's also father of Ganesha and Muruga, and husband of Parvati, and sancho (Hola Oscar!) of Ganga.

Complete with fire, drum, snakes, moon, and crushed dwarf

Shiva is one of the oldest deities and is arguably a composition of a bunch of earlier deities that were unified into one[2]. I have a friend who argues that Shiva could be a woman, and it's common to see Shiva portrayed as a hybrid with his consort, Parvati. In fact, the second charanum* of Kalmari, I'll alternate between Shiva and Parvati.

Shiva + Parvati

Shiva is an essential part of Bharatanatyam. At the beginning of every performance, we do a bow to the Nataraja, which is the dancing depiction of Shiva. Shiva also has some of the most striking (and I think best) poses in dance. However, they're pretty challenging, especially when you're tired and you need to hold them for a good 10 seconds or so.

A standard Nataraja as performed in the British Museum

The difficulty of Shiva's dancing poses inspires itself. I guess it's a metapiece. The Pandya king, one of the ancient rulers of Tamil Nadu (then known as 'Pandya Nadu', naturally) was so distraught at seeing Lord Shiva constantly dancing on his right leg that he begged Shiva to switch legs and dance on his left. The Pandyan King, in a typically measured Bollywood response, threatens to kill himself if Shiva does not oblige. Shiva does not disappoint, and kindly switches legs to avoid any potential mass suicides.

Hooray!

Alas, the switching of legs does little for the performer, since you just end up doing most the poses on your left leg, which then becomes sore. However, I would request that the audience refrain from threats of suicide. Instead, please cheer louder for me. I feel that, culturally, obnoxious crowd support is one of the few advantages I have going for me.

As a side note, Susmitha Bhat did a fantastic rendition of this piece in her incredibly awesome arangetram last Saturday in Alabama. My insightful boyfriend, who was watching her performance as well, noted that all of the drama could have been avoided had Lord Shiva had access to foam rollers and a good sports masseuse. I think it's unlikely I'll be including those in my rendition, though.

 *I think it's like a verse, but my Guru gets mad when I project Western musical concepts onto Carnatic musical structure

Impromptu Holiday

This last week was by far the most social week I have had since... probably the New Year. My week was as follows:

Monday: Dance class
Tuesday: Dinner with friends of Ed's visiting from Singapore
Wednesday: Gws-Chix* Dinner
Thursday: Concert of French Hipster Sensation Yelle

Ask Ed for a lovely rendition of Safari Disco Club

I had roughly infinity times the amount of social activity in a week. To maintain sanity, I decided to take Friday off. It wound up not being much of a holiday - I slept in an extra hour, but then there was laundry to do, dishwashers to run, arangetram invitations to coordinate, and 2 hours of abhinaya practice to do. So it was a bit of a let down in terms of what I would normally expect from a 'holiday'. I kept reframing it to myself as an improvement over having to do all that stuff plus a full day of work.

I'm hoping to take at least one more dancing holiday before my interns start and I'm thoroughly chained to my desk. After July 9th, I'm looking forward to taking for realz holidays again.

7 weeks to go.

* 'GWS' is the team I work on at Google, and 'Chix' is an intragroup-appropriate expression for 'women'

Mangozz

Lakshmi berated me today for not updating my blog much lately. So here goes!

These last two weeks I've been having my usual breakfast shakes, but with a slight modification: for realz Alphonso mangos straight from India. For those who have never been to India or had an Alphonso mango, they are amazing. Like pudding in mango form. I thought I didn't like mangoes until I tried Alphonso. They only grow in a small part of india on the west coast. Finding them in grocery stores is extremely difficult - the season is only about a month long, and every Indian person wants them, so they disappear quickly. Last year, though, I learned that I could buy mangoes online.

I'm on what I call a "mango program" provided by the highly reputable-sounding mangozz.com. They pick the mangoes in India, have the USDA inspect them in Bombay, then fly them to Chicago where they are dispatched across the country. I get a weekly shipment of 6 mangoes for 4 weeks. This cost me $185, $50 of which was for the shipping alone.

Carbon Footprint-alicious!

This is the second year in a row I'm ordering them, though last year I split an order with Radha, so this marks a new level of disregard for the planet. BUT THEY ARE SO DELICIOUS!

My babies - delicious, yummy babies

Although delicious, they basically negate all my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint. For instance, being vegetarian saves me about 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year (I eat mostly vegan during the week, so that ups my savings)*. However, the carbon footprint of a person flying from Bombay to San Francisco via Chicago is 3.672 tons. That overhead would be less for mangoes - let's say it's 1/20th. That makes the carbon footprint of my mango order:

CF(mangoes) = 4 * 3.672 tons / 20 = 0.7344 tons

The carbon footprint of 4 weeks of fresh mangoes from India. is almost half the savings of being full vegetarian, 3/4 vegan all year. I am a disgrace. Although I guess this means next year I can get twice as much :)

7.5 Weeks to Go

This evening we had an all-women-of-my-team get together. I discovered that one of my teammates is due to give birth on the date of my arangetram. Another teammate asked her how long she had until then, and she estimated about 8 weeks. I pointed out that it was exactly 7.5 weeks from today.

So in case there was any doubt, this confirms that arangetrams induce more anxiety than pregnancy.

Waking Life

I've been taking my heart rate every morning to figure out what my typical heart rate is, whether I'm over training, and whether I'm getting any fitter. The results for the last three weeks (in bpm):

When I started, I had just increased my weekly volume of dance and I was doing more high intensity practices. After about a week, I seem used to it. What I don't understand are the occasional dips in heart rate. My resting rate is in the low fifties. So what does it mean when it's 48 bpm?

Follow Up to Weekend Burnout

Photo Shoot

Initial photos are up! I'm going to keep most of them under wraps, at least until the invitations are out.

Getting my Saraswati on

The poses themselves were good, but they were pretty low light and there's something smudgy on the lens that occasionally blurs spots. I'm hoping my sister can work some magic to fix all that up.

That soft atheist glow

Overall, I'm really excited to have some pictures. I can't wait to get the invitations done and sent out.


Knee Situation

My knee, which I strained in the photo shoot, is recovering nicely. I took it easy on Monday and Tuesday in terms of dance steps. I've been taking ibuprofen after practice every day this week to prevent any extra swelling and stretching extra diligently (especially quads and IT band), and heating my knee when I get home to keep everything nice and relaxed. Yesterday I visited the doctor and she confirmed that I should keep doing everything I'm doing and didn't object to my continued practices. Great news!

Weekend Burn Out

I originally thought this weekend was going to be fairly relaxed. Gradually, though, it filled up, pretty much entirely. I think this has put my body and my mind on strike.

On Saturday, for instance, I had a lesson scheduled with my student teacher. She's great, but she's a hardass, so I knew it was going to be work. I had arrived at Google a few hours before to get in a warm up and review some pieces before meeting with her. Once I finished my warm up, though, my brain was just not with me. I kept forgetting steps to pieces I had done fine in the last week. I wasn't excited about working on any of my pieces. Basically, I was a bit burnt out. But I have another 9 weeks to go and an hour of torture ahead of me. What to do!

What I ended up doing is possibly the geekiest thing ever, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I should admit something first: since I've been dancing here, I increasingly hear the music I listen to every day as Bharatanatyam music. Initially it was just the very rare song that had beats similar to dance rhythms. Since I've started doing more of the miming stuff and increasing my abhinaya vocabulary, I now see a lot of the songs I like as abhinaya sequences.

To further embarrass myself, here are my top pop Bharatanatyam songs as of late:

• Siren Song by Bat for Lashes
• Share the Fall (Full Vocal Mix) by Roni Size
• Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine
• Triumphant by Röyksopp

So on Saturday, I worked on Siren Song. My vocabulary still has some holes in it, but I'd say I did a pretty good job. It's not quite arangetram material, so for now you won't have the pleasure (laughter?) of seeing it.

By the time I got to class, I was pretty upbeat. We did a non-stop run through of my first half, less the last third of my varnum, which I have yet to learn. It was just over an hour of crazy intense dance. And unlike most practice sessions, it wasn't a non-stop commentary of things I was doing wrong. There were actually several pauses! By Bharatanatyam standards, this is huge.

Sunday I did my photoshoot for my invitations. It was a totally last minute affair - I piggybacked on the session of one of my classmates who had a family friend doing it. Originally my sister was going to take my photos, but she's stuck in New York for the time being. I didn't know until Wednesday that I would be doing it on Sunday, so I had to rearrange my social calendar and move a dinner get together with Le Boyfriend and his visiting cousins to Saturday after the intense dance class. Sigh!

After the photo shoot, my right knee starting hurting. Not cool. I think it was from holding poses on a leg that was just too tired. I had scheduled a massage for today (Monday) at lunch weeks ago, and the masseur ended up doing a really good job of getting my knee loosened up. He also gave me some stretching tips for my quads, which according to him are a disaster waiting to happen. Good to know!

So now I'm writing this with a hop pad on my knee. I'm heading to bed now in hopes that I'll finally be caught up on sleep by tomorrow.

Walk-to-Work Fridays

Pilates on Fridays hasn't worked out so well since I finish at 10am, making me kind of late for work (even by Google standards). Today I tried an alternative means of Friday exercise: walk to work. Remember that I work in SF on Fridays, so we're talking a 3.5 mile walk vs. a 35 mile walk.

This is an attempt to boost my amount low-intensity aerobic activity in a week. The dance conditioning and nutrition books I've been reading explain that dance is a combination of high intensity anaerobic activity and very low-intensity pauses. While these descriptions were geared towards western-style dance, this applies directly to Bharatanatyam. In general, pieces are either combinations of alternating jathis (fast, intense dance sequences) and abhinaya (very low intensity miming sequences), or strictly abhinaya. This scientific model explains why, in spite of excercising for 10 hours a week or so and eating a very healthy diet, I still have a muffin top hanging around my tummy.

As a bonus, Google donates money to charity for every self-powered-commuting days, so I earned some charity $30 for my trip. Awesome!

At 9:15am, I left my house.

Sunny and pleasant: so far, so good

I rounded the corner, and hit Valencia. It was a typical quiet morning, with hipsters waking up to get their morning Ritual lattes and whatever else jobless style fiends do in the morning.

Don't be fooled - it's not all this nice

For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, the Mission (where I live) has a mixed reputation. The part I live in is strictly nice. Houses are well kept, commercial space is occupied. However, the north and east Mission are a different story. Sure enough, I crossed 16th street and BAM! A woman stumbling around with no pants (or underwear or anything covering from the waist down). Good morning!

A few more blocks and I was in the scenic Tenderloin/Civic Center area. This is where I really expect to see the pantsless and stumbly. This morning was pretty tame, though. Nothing unusual to report.

Things don't get rolling here until the strip clubs open

There was a touching moment when a non-homeless guy (I'm stereotyping, but yeah) helped a homeless and disabled guy fix his broken walker. San Francisco is very sweet sometimes. Another couple of blocks and I hit another problem area: Tourist Town.

How do I get to the Hard Rock Cafe?

I quickly dodged over a block to Mission street. There were a few people wandering about trying to find a conference they were attending, but otherwise is was fine. Cutting through Yerba Buena park, I made it over to the SoMA/Financial District where Google is.

A mix of tourists, yuppies with dogs/babies, and snoozing homeless people

The financial district was a bit of a mess with a ton of construction. I think it's for the new transbay terminal. The upside was that there were a lot fewer vagrants than I remember in the neighbourhood. Mostly just shiny buildings with finance-looking people.

I'm glad I work in engineering

Another few blocks and arrive at Google at 10:15am. Exactly 1 hour. Not bad for a 3.7 mile walk.

Dance for Whiter Teeth

I had my first trip to the dentist of the year, and the hygienist commented that my teeth were a lot whiter than they normally are. Was I doing anything differently, she asked? At first I couldn't think of anything - I don't use toothpaste with any real claims of whitening, I don't use the fancy whitening treatments...

Mysteriously Sparkling

Then I realized - I've purposefully dropped caffeine-based teas out of my diet. This is mostly because caffeine is contraindicated in every sports nutrition book I've ever read. I wasn't a caffeine fiend - I typically drank maybe two cups of black or green tea a day. I've known for years that my teeth are particularly bad at picking up caffeine stains, but it was never something that bothered me enough to actively fix.

What a pleasant bonus!

Another Pants Bites the Dust

It's two weeks into my final three months of dance training, and aside from some initial trouble adapting, I think it's going well. However, as the subject mentions, I have yet another pair of pants that my dance boot-ay will no longer fit into. Sigh.

This was upsetting at first - I'm supposed to be in shape, so why am I putting on so much weight? One characteristic of the weight gain is that it's strictly junk-in-the-trunk (and thighs)-based. After thinking for two seconds, it's obvious. The primary stance that we use for dance is called 'aramandi', which is like a ballet plier, but lower and more painful.

Goodbye, skinny jeans

If I'm going to be dancing around for 2 hours like this, I'm going to need some ass-based reinforcements. 

Even if, logically, I should be gaining weight, I still feel uneasy about it. One of the books I got recently, Diet For Dancers, is certainly not helping to assuage my anxieties. For one, the typical weight range they list for women dancers of my height (5'10"/177cm) is 135-149 lbs (that's roughly 61 to 68 kg). My weight is 156 lbs (mass 70.8 kg) and rising. The book also talks about creepy dance-world practices like trainers feeding their students amphetamines and the popularity of smoking as weight control. Sketchtown.

Body image is definitely one area where Indian dance has western dance beat. There is not typical Bharatanatyam physique. There tend to be patterns - it's certainly not common for dancers to be overweight. But there is no pressure to be skinny while staying fit and strong. Most Bharatanatyam dancers have builds closer to soccer players or track stars, which makes sense given that they're doing an equally stressful activity that demands muscle. I have yet to encounter dancers who obsess about weight and trade frightening diet tips.

Since I'm in this wonderful athletic world free from obsessive body image ideals, I'm trying extra hard to get past my own hang ups. Most of the people I dance with are teenage girls. The last thing I want to do is introduce them all to the world of body image obsession. It smacks a little too much of colonial arrivals bearing their small pox and such.

So here's Bharatanatyam Bootay!

Corporate Sponsorship

While I'm not usually a fan of excessive branding, I made an exception this week for my new TOM's shoes. For those of you living outside of hipster circles, TOM's shoes are very basic canvas (and occasionally other organic) material slip on shoes.

They are fairly expensive for what they are - about $50 at their most basic. However, they are incredibly comfortable and cover the tops of my feet, which is key for keeping my feet warm in San Francisco's perpetually coolish climate. Also, they had a strong endorsement from one of my dance classmates, Meena, who has excellent taste in pretty much everything. So I finally got a pair of the red ones.

The TOM's website has a fun feature called "How we wear them". As far as I can tell, there has yet to be a "We wear them to Bharatanatyam class!" posting, so Meena and I decided to submit one. It's going to take another day or two to get "approval" (presumably they have human screeners to weed out "We do <gross sexually explicit activity> in our TOMs!" posts). In the meantime, here's our sneak preview:

Lord Shiva, atop His vehicle the bull, both wearing their red TOMs

Thanks to Meena for being such a great sport, and to Shriya for taking such a great picture.