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As an eight-year-old obsessed with Bruce Lee films, I preferred karate lessons and our extra curricular worlds seemed wholly divergent. Tha Thai Thai Tha, she’d chant to my mother and aunts’ approval. She patiently explained the movements that she learned in that week’s class, performing them to melodious Tamil words that were foreign to my ear. As a child in Durban, a fifth generation Indian South African, I’d watch as my cousin practiced the dance form in my grandmother’s house. In Tamil Nadu state, the birthplace of Bharatanatyam, I revisit some of the traditions of my ancestors. As she mesmerises the crowd in the run-down community hall through nearly an hour of exquisite performance with no rest, she is yogi, praise-singer to the deities, a woman in absolute mastery of her art. Fluid yet controlled, with a spine that remains in an elegant unyielding line, she smiles through the succession of adavus, the intricate steps and positions of Bharatanatyam, regarded the oldest classical dance form in India. A teacher, a god, a memory? She is smiling now, positioned in half-squat, transitioning into lunge, leaping with a feather-soft landing from side to side to the encouragement of drum and chanting singer. Her golden waist-belt, weighty and exotic, glimmers, and her eyes dart to and fro in conversation. And then, as a ripple of energy courses through her right hand, the bells on her ankles ring rapidly, rhythmically, freeing her body. Everything is still for a moment – mridangam drums, violin, the high-pitched crooning of the Carnatic songstress. She is holding her gaze heavenward – one beat, two, three, staring at her left hand in mayura, the ring finger and thumb touching lightly. Her dark eyes are lined thickly in kohl, intimating the drama of a doe trapped in tragic light. For Singapore Airlines Priority Club magazine.
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Ishay Govender-Ypma returns to her ancestral roots in Chennai, India to explore further. Bharatanatyam in Chennai, Rhythm City The ancient art of classical Bharatanatyam dance has undergone a revival.