GROWING ROOTS
When Santha Bhaskar first joined Bhaskar’s Academy of Dance in 1955 after her marriage to the late KP Bhaskar, who founded the company three years prior, she had to quickly adapt to conducting dance lessons. That did not come easy for the Kerala-born dancer had no teaching experience. “I had no idea how to teach,” she notes in a Zoom interview with granddaughter Malini Bhaskar. “Learning dance and music was a way of life for me growing up. I never liked it, but my father wanted me to learn the art form and thought I was quite talented at dancing. When I came to Singapore and was asked to teach [dance] by my late husband, I simply performed in front of my students and asked them to learn through imitation.”
Santha teaches Bharatanatyam, which is the oldest classical Indian dance form that originated in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The dance movements are characterised by rhythmic footwork, bent legs, and highly stylised gestures to convey a dramatic mood or spiritual narrative. Over the next 10 years, she commuted between Singapore and Malaysia to conduct lessons in order to make a living. She shares, “Singapore was still young and the population was very small so we had to travel to Malaysia to conduct dance lessons for a fee of $5 per head every month.” Today, Santha, who received the Cultural Medallion in 1990 for her contributions to dance, refuses to stop teaching and still is the artistic director of the company, which is now known as Bhaskar’s Arts Academy (BAA).
“I don’t want to take a break,” says the 80-year-old, who even conducted Zoom lessons for her alumni students, all of whom have been learning from her in the past 40 years, during Singapore’s circuit breaker period in its fight against Covid-19. She admits she prefers teaching and choreographing to performing. “I love seeing the product of my choreography on stage, as well as to groom the next generation of performers.”
BAA has come a long way since its founding years. Singapore’s premier Indian performing arts group, which counts both Santha’s daughter, Meenakshy, and Malini as its core members, also has a dedicated teaching wing in the Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society (NAS). The non-profit teaching institution, with more than 800 students enrolled, offers courses in dance, music, theatre and yoga.
Malini attributes her passion for dance to Santha. “I have always been very close to my grandma, but I was never expected to take on Indian classical dance professionally. In fact, us grandchildren were taught to pur
sue our own interests from a young age.” She has been dancing since childhood and now practises full-time at BAA, and holds her own children’s dance lessons at NAS. She recalls visiting Santha during dance rehearsals, or listening to music and watching performance recordings when she stayed over at her grandmother’s house. “That was how I started,” shares the 25-year-old. “I wanted to be like her—on stage, performing in full costume and make-up.”
It is obvious that the two have a unique bond built on trust, mutual respect and a shared passion for their craft. “Malini often provides me with her opinions as I choreograph dances these days and I respect her thoughts,” says Santha. Similarly, Malini acknowledges how her grandmother is open to feedback and suggestions and also welcomes ideas by the company’s dancers. “She’s slowly grooming me to try choreography. In fact, just last year I made my debut as a choreographer in one of my grandma’s shows.”
To both women, the possibilities for Indian dance choreography are limitless and that has helped them in keeping up with the times. In 2016 and 2017, Santha worked closely with a group of mathematicians and physicists to create a dance inspired by quantum entanglement, a topic in quantum physics. The performance was subsequently staged as part of the National University of Singapore’s Arts Festival, where the performers’ movements resembled that of electrons and photons. “You can choreograph just about anything in Indian dance,” Malini expounds. “People are attracted to Bharatanatyam for its raw and traditional style, but instead of doing Ramayana or another similar epic, you can definitely give the performance a contemporary twist and take on a modern-day topic—such as quantum physics!”