Present and future

Patrick: What is the biggest challenge practicing in Scotland?

Gaby: The cold. 

Karen: Space – finding the space when you don't have a budget.

Gaby: Even when you have a budget you can end up spending so much money

Karen: Especially for more than a random hour at a time – a space for a proper rehearsal of three or four hours can be £40, if you get it very, very cheaply. That's where our practice suffers a lot. And the cold makes it worse, because you can't just go straight into your practice and dance for an hour – your body takes time to get warm. You need to warm up even to do the basic steps.

Gaby: Because of that we struggle with injuries, too. I recently spoke with an Odissi dancer who said she just doesn’t practice Odissi while she’s here because it’s too cold for her. For me, maybe another challenge is not having a teacher based here. Like our teachers in India, they still go to their own teachers – that would be great.

Patrick: And what's the most rewarding part of practicing Indian classical dance, in Scotland or just generally?

Karen: Teaching in Scotland, there is a great appreciation of having access to the art form. We often teach adults who maybe learned this dance form as a child, then they gave it up for studies, marrying, having children, and they think that they will never have that chance to dance. Then suddenly they do, and they truly appreciate having these classes, and they enjoy that the children have a connection with their culture.

Gaby: In terms of dancing, I find performing to be the moment when I don't worry and am just in the moment. After the performance there’s a moment – before I see any videos or footage of it [everyone laughs], when I feel like, okay, I managed, and I enjoyed it – that part is very rewarding. I think that builds my self-confidence. In teaching the most rewarding part is seeing that same feeling in the students – when they go from being self-conscious, and convinced they can't do it, to one day just dancing and understanding. The fact that you could in any way help that process is very rewarding.

Karen: Sometimes I can't even continue what I'm doing with the class when that happens, I have to stop and just tell a child “That was beautiful”. When you can see they are really feeling the dance. This goes for us too - it’s amazing when you feel that someone is moved by your performance. We are both quite hard on ourselves and quite insecure, but setting that aside, we love being able to share this beautiful dance form.

Patrick: Now that you are both quite experienced dancers and thinking about creating your own things – what would you really like to see in the future in Indian classical dance, personally or generally.

Karen: I think in Scotland it’s good there are more schools, more possibilities opening up. I would like there to be a good relationship between the schools. I would also like there to be a culture of openness to visiting artists, and of truly wanting to watch Indian classical dance. Not just in the Indian community, everyone. There is a tradition of doing master classes with visiting artists in India, people go from place to place, and in the UK that’s possible around London, Birmingham, Leeds, but there doesn’t seem to be much in Scotland yet.

Gaby: Personally, I’m more and more drawn to the traditional side of classical dance. I guess it’s partly because I didn’t get to learn it from a young age. Nowadays you have so much dance on social media - people showing you what they can do, from perfect adavus, to fusion with songs like Despacito. Personally, I don’t like that kind of fusion. I understand that maybe in India there is this need to open classical dance to more modern things, because it’s been traditional for a long time. But here, we get these snippets of something fusion, for which people here don’t have the context or background. And I am just more drawn to the traditional repertoire, and to learning more of the fundaments more deeply.

Karen: There’s so much still to learn.

Gaby: There are thousands of dancers in India, and you have to do something different to get noticed, but they have all trained so much, they know the basics perfectly, and so generally you see good results with their fusion. But what I would love to see for bharatnatyam is for it to go out of India in its classical form, because I think for the rest of the world actually to be able to learn that tradition is the richest thing that can happen. We have contemporary and fusion and loads of dance styles here. Having something where we can see the difference between learning this, and maybe learning salsa - that’s great.

Karen: I think sometimes, when you’re looking for funding, that can be hard to present. Because if you’re showing an exciting new collaboration, then it’s a kind of novelty that can be easier to sell. Whereas doing something in a pure form, even if what you’re presenting is uncommon, like classical Indian dance, it doesn’t come across as well in the arts climate here in the UK. There was not really a context for arts bodies or audiences to understand it for a long time.

Gaby: In some cases, fusion can work, if it feels organic, but not if it’s fusion for the sake of fusion. Like contemporary dancers adding mudras to their dance. Just mixing and matching, without creating something new.

Karen: Yes, you have to think: what are you trying to say with it?