Where East and West connect and traditional meets contemporary
Hindu cosmology, search for human wholeness focus of Lata Pada’s latest creation
Music can speak to us at many levels. For Lata Pada, founder and artistic director of Mississauga’s Sampradaya Dance Creations, the unique musical genre pioneered by classical pianist Anil Srinivasan and traditional Carnatic singer Sikkil Gurucharan has helped her define her complex cultural identity.
Srinivasan and Gurucharan, both based in India, continue to have active international solo careers but, during their nine years of collaboration, have won growing acclaim for an innovative West-meets-East musical style they describe as “contemporary classical.”
“It’s not some easy-listening fusion,” Srinivasan explains.
“It’s beyond fusion. We follow a certain musical grammar we’ve developed ourselves.”
While the two men have a deep respect for their Indian heritage, their artistic interests and sensibilities are global. These very much align with Pada’s. Her Indian childhood was also a mix of West and East, leftover British raj customs and Hindu culture, including deep immersion in the classic tradition of Bharatanatyam dance.
It’s a cosmopolitan heritage that has led Pada, with her wide-ranging interest in different dance forms, to explore how Bharatanatyam can evolve and remain relevant today.
“I’d heard about Anil and Sikkil and was very curious,” says Pada. “Finally I managed to hear them live in Chennai. For those of us who’ve led a globetrotting existence there’s always the search for a place called home. The moment I heard them I felt a sense of belonging; West and East combined in a seamless way. Their music grounded me.”
Now, in their first choreographic collaboration in North America, Srinivasan and Gurucharan, together with Aruna Narayan Kalle, a noted Toronto-based exponent of the sarangi, a plaintive-sounding South Asian bowed string instrument, join Pada’s six-member dance troupe as Sampradaya celebrates its 25th anniversary with Nirantara — Beyond Space and Time, a major new work exploring Hindu cosmology and the human search for wholeness.
Pada, whose achievements were honoured with appointment to the Order of Canada in 2008, chose the name Sampradaya carefully for her independently constituted but closely associated Bharatanatyam training academy and professional company. It’s a Sanskrit word encompassing the idea of a dynamic, evolving tradition.
Sampradaya was founded in1990 in the aftermath of personal tragedy. Pada came to Canada in 1964 as the 17-year-old bride of an Indian geophysicist, recently graduated from McGill and working for mining giant Inco in Thompson, Man. Pada recalls being the town’s only sari-wearing resident. With no South Asian community to retreat into, she quickly adapted to Canadian life. Her five years in Thompson, during which she became a Canadian citizen, included ice fishing, trips to Churchill to see the polar bears and exposure to First Nations cultures and traditions.
“I treasure the experience,” says Pada. “It helped me to connect quickly to Canada in a way I suspect many new Canadians do not.”
Inco then moved Pada’s husband, Vishnu, to a remote mining site on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. There, besides raising their two daughters, Arti and Brinda, she learned the local language and studied Indonesian dance forms.
Then, after a decade of equatorial heat, it was back to Canada, to Sudbury, Ont. That was where, in June 1985, Pada’s husband and daughters began a journey intended to take them to Mumbai to join Lata, who had travelled ahead to perform. They never made it. Their lives ended off the southern coast of Ireland in the infamous terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182.
During the painful process of reassembling the fragments of a shat-
“I suppose I could have stayed in India. But Canada beckoned." LATA PADA ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, MISSISSAUGA’S SAMPRADAYA DANCE CREATIONS
tered existence, Lata Pada found solace in dance. She remained in Mumbai, immersed herself in Bharatanatyam and revived her international solo performing career, including engagements in Canada where she finally resettled in 1990 at the prompting of friends in Mississauga.
“I suppose I could have stayed in India,” she recalls, “but Canada beckoned. It had somehow been seared into me.”
From small beginnings in the basement studio of Pada’s home, Sampradaya’s academy and performing company have grown and flourished artistically. In 2006, both moved to a leased former warehouse space in an industrial park near the border of Oakville, ideally situated in a region with a large South Asian community. In 2012, Sampradaya was able to expand next door and build itself a handsome, 100-seat “black box” studio/theatre almost 7,000 square feet in total.
The academy is accredited as a national training institution, thus giving it access to Department of Canadian Heritage and Ontario Arts Council funding.
It is also finalizing an agreement with York University that will allow academy graduates to get credits toward a dance degree.
In parallel with the academy’s growth, the performing company has positioned itself as a creative leader as it explores a range of dance-centred, multidisciplinary, crosscultural expressions where West meets East and old meets new. Nirantara — Beyond Space and Time is at the Fleck Dance Theatre, 207 Queens Quay W., until Saturday; harbourfront centre.com or 416-973-4000.