Obviously, there has to be a lot that dance and science share. Ask Apoorva Jayaraman, a woman of impressive distinctions. She studied B.Sc (Hons) Physics at St.Stephen’s College, Delhi, and followed it up with a Master’s degree from Oxford University and a Ph.D in Astronomy from Cambridge. But when she got on to the stage at Madurai’s Meenakshi Temple on Monday evening for an hour’s performance that included a 30-minute main Varnam piece on goddess Meenakshi, she thrilled as a dancer with deceptive ease. Even if one was left searching for the elusive astrophysicist in her, she was actually perhaps figuring out the makeup of the universe through her graceful movements and multilayered expressions.
“Both physics and dance require a desire to excel and the drive to transcend limits,” she smiles. If science gives you analytical training, classical arts fine tunes your intuitiveness and both feed each other, she adds.
In her case, destiny and unconventionality played a role too. “I was always attracted to dance from childhood mainly because my play school teacher in Bangalore used to do story telling with lot of dance mudras. Simply watching her sparked off interest in dance and I started training in bharatanatyam at the age of five,” she says. At the age of 13, when she met legendary exponent of abhinaya, Padmini Ravi at a workshop it opened up a new world for her.
“She asked my mother why was I doing academics in a regular school and made me realise how much more I could do in dance. Belonging to the old school of thought, to her dance itself was complete education and that planted a seed in my mind,” says Apoorva. At 16 she dropped a bomb on her parents wanting to join High School in Chennai, a city that would give her better opportunities to take bharatanatyam training and learning to a higher level.
Under eminent danseuse Priyadarshini Govind, Apoorva created her own sense of individuality. “Dance gave me a different perspective to life. When you dance, you are just yourself.”
Also being a brilliant in academics, Physics came calling and her parents insisted she go for it. She went to the best institutions and used her skills in all forms, from researching on galaxy formation to teaching, public engagement and outreach, writing in journals and sharing the excitement of scientific ideas with varied range of audiences across all ages and disciplines. Luckily for her, she also kept in touch with her guru and helped with making DVDs on reference material for students of bharatanatyam. The Indian Classical Arts Society she established in Cambridge in 2010 brought her in touch with interesting group of artistes and also provided her the platform to continue her practice and experiment with cross style choreography.
If the complexity of astronomy drew me to the family of stars, the beauty, elegance, and magic of dance sort of completed me, notes Apoorva, who after completing her Ph.D made a critical professional choice.
“I had a natural leaning towards dance and wanted to return to India for self-fulfilment,” she says and did so three years ago. This time her parents understood her better. The set of dozen DVDs that she prepared with Priyadarsini Govind during her five years of study in High School and Under-Graduation stood her in good stead. It gave her reach and recognition to the extent that she now regularly gets invited for workshops and performances all over the world. She lives in Chennai now taking individual classes with handful of select students because she feels the guru-shishya parampara is a journey of bonding that never ends.
Apoorva, whose first major significant performance was at the Music Academy two years ago, says dance comes through passion and not for obtaining degrees and becoming technique-oriented as is the case today with more training schools coming up. “When you learn from a guru, you understand the art form better, acquire values and become influential in creative content,” she points out, adding for a dancer improvement is not only in terms of executing perfection but it is in enhancing the beauty of the performance.
“Dance enables me to find different facets of inner self and fills me with joy,” she says. In physics, she needed to challenge and explain with the help of words. But dance is a wordless form of expression that translates emotions and thoughts into graceful and rhythmic physical movements. “I feel so connected with everything now,” she says.
QUOTE
Performing in the Madurai Meenakshi Temple for the first time was a special experience. Indian thought and art find incomparable expression in every stone and column of this temple. While it is breathtaking to simply to walk down its galleries, trying to absorb the overwhelming grandeur and comprehend the genius that went into creating this timeless space, as an artist it was indeed a very special moment to be able to present my art here. It had a completely different aura.
Published - September 28, 2017 03:16 pm IST
