When I moved to Mumbai in 2011 I never thought I would go back to teach classical Ballet, the art form that I learned since childhood and performed in my country, which is so much rooted in our Italian culture.
It happened that because of the easier ways to communicate, internet and above all the western marketing strategies pushing towards the east. Ballet has entered the mind of young children of the Indian urban society. The majority of students joined my classes because they have seen Barbie Ballerina’s videos.
As a consequence western Ballet has become fashionable in Indian cities. I happened to be at this particular time in Mumbai and pushed by a friend’s daughter, I started conducting classes about 12 years ago on a very small scale in my house, in a suburb area called Goregaon East.
It took short time to see my students multiply, mostly by voice of mouth.
I never done any sort of publicity. Actually I wanted to maintain it on a family level. I do really believe that everyone can learn but at the same time only some kind of children with certain parents will be able to pursue it to a higher level.
As everyone knows Ballet is very demanding and not all children of today world will have the stamina and the patience to practice it. It takes long time to achieve just a few steps and small combinations. Therefore it is not meant for an asian capitalist mentality of fast use and consume.
It developed in the courts of Italy in the 14th century and in its evolution has always been an elite’s time pass and it will always be, excluding a few exceptions. Of course from 19th century we had serious professionals into it when the major ballets where created (Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake) but still under the patronage of the Russian Royalty.
Nowadays , just to confirm my previous statement, we have the best schools and companies in the richest part of the world (Montecarlo, Paris, New York, to name a few) and in some places where has been used as a political propaganda (Cuba, Moscow and St Petersburg, Chorea and to a certain extent China and Japan)
Coming back to the simple suburb of Mumbai, which meanwhile has grown a lot and become almost a hub of the city. My first record was the shyness of the children to wear a sleeveless leotard and stockings….I clearly remember one mother saying that the father could not pick up her daughter because of all those girls with little clothes on moving around in the corridor!
On the other hand I can see that “those teenager girls” really want to wear ballet clothes to finally feel modern and free from the heavy conservative society they are living in.
Changing clothes together was and still is a big issue! Nobody has to see someone else naked body, not even a small part.
As far as the class practice I saw from beginning a strong desire to learn as much as possible and to be the best, to the extent of strong competition….which I tried to stop considering that most of my students, more or less talented, do not have a professional future here in India as per now. There are no professional ballet companies as per now.
Said this, the majority of students do not attend regularly, due to many reasons or excuses starting from pains, periods, deaths of relations, visiting sick family members in their home towns, festivals ( Indian populations being a mix of varieties of religions has many holidays), weddings, school exams. This last is the most used….even small girls of 6 years will not attend if they have regular school tests. This goes to the point that you never have all the students attending at the same time, which obviously is a nightmare when it comes to choreograph for a show.
As we know every race have different body features and Indian girls, do sit cross legged on the floors from birth so they have a good turn out but very flat feet and no instep, as an average.
Traditionally Indian feminine beauty is the one of a round body with curves like the temple sculptures of South India to the point that in poems a woman is often described as “ beautifully moving with an elephant’s walk”. All this doesn’t fit with the western classical idea of a woman-spirit, like Giselle for example.
There is a common Indian way to move the head which is a sign of approval so deep rooted in Indian habits that when they dance sometime they keep using it and it doesn’t look proper at all, though in small children it looks very sweet…I end up by incorporating it in some dances as a choreographic move!
Most of Indian classical dances are based on pushing the body towards the earth….considered almost sacred, as a Mother Goddess.
In fact in many styles ( like Odissi, Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, and others) classes and performances start with a particular bow, like a ballet reverence, which enacts the ritual of touching the earth and ask forgiveness to stamp on it.
This is to say that there is a ancestral concept of moving the body downward which is the complete opposite of the Ballet technique, fully oriented towards the sky in order to create aerial patterns.
This is something I notice in my students. They do not easily get on demi pointe or they deepen too much in a demi plié.
I have to say that in class they work hard and they are happy to get to know something that is really far from their culture and very exotic for them. Stamina is quite good and they have a huge respect for the teacher and elders generally. They have also a certain innocence and naivety which last long, meaning they remain children longer than the western children. For all this they surely make you loving them a lot.
Parents are often over protective ad very ambitious almost calculating at times.
The knowledge of Ballet is very limited in India and some parents are scared of their children’s body to be manipulated to get more flexibility. They see some videos of Russian classes and get scared.
Another problem is the strong opposition from the Indian classical dance teachers and gurus that again see it as a risk of loosing their power and importance. Therefore they don't support it, using the excuse that the costumes are showing too much flesh. Of course there are some who understand the value but it is a minority. There are others who are growing their children with the perspective of sending them to the west to study further, so they are very keen in any western activity or they see it as a showing off time pass.
Yes, in India still the awareness of the female body and other women’s issues are very backward. It is a strong male society where boys are considered superior to girls by birth. This explains also why we do not get boys to learn…especially from a woman teacher who is also a foreigner.