Handle them with care

Leela Samson proposes an evaluation of teaching methodologies for dance.

July 24, 2014 08:43 pm | Updated 08:43 pm IST - Chennai

CHENNAI, 20/07/2014: Leela Samson, Bharatanatyam exponent, who was selected for this year's Natya Kala Acharya Award by The Music Academy, in Chennai on July 20, 2014.
Photo: V. Ganesan.

CHENNAI, 20/07/2014: Leela Samson, Bharatanatyam exponent, who was selected for this year's Natya Kala Acharya Award by The Music Academy, in Chennai on July 20, 2014. Photo: V. Ganesan.

Some years ago, when Leela Samson, Director of Kalakshetra, was teaching Bharatanatyam in Delhi, a parent brought her little daughter to class to learn the dance form. Leela describes the child as a puny little girl eager to learn dance. Beginning with the first few adavus, Leela taught her to sit in aramandi. Just then, Leela also paused to reach for the tattu kazhi, an instrument used to keep the beat in dance comprising a wooden plank and a stick. The minute Leela picked up the stick, the girl stepped back in fear. “How was that little girl to know that we use a tattu kazhi in Bharatanatyam? It was her first day in class. She probably thought I was reaching for a stick to hit or intimidate her, perhaps. That day, I did away with the tattu kazhi and realised that perhaps we need to evaluate erudite and erstwhile teaching methodologies and begin with familiarising our students with the world of Bharatanatyam that is today often completely alien to their world,” said Leela. Anecdotes like these formed an important part of her recent lecture-demonstration 'Teaching methodologies and learning processes in Bharatanatyam.’ .

She began the lecture by making a case for the topic itself. “Dance was taught by erudite scholars who had a firm grip on technique but most of them never danced themselves. How relevant are those teaching practices today? I have been contemplating whether in terms of teaching methodologies and learning practises we are doing enough and if there is room for improvement,” she affirmed.

She then presented two scenarios- teaching methodologies for children and the same for adults. In the first scenario, she quoted Montessori, the famous educationist, who said that “children are ‘reborn’ as it were, every six years of the early stages of their development and at each of these, the child presents characteristics different from those exhibited during the preceding years.”

Leela argued that the teachers need to be aware of these different stages in a child’s life and adapt their teaching methodologies accordingly. “In class, teachers of dance are either too harsh or too indulgent in their methods. In an effort to be a teacher, we fail to treat the child with the respect she or he deserves. We should lay down our expectations and the framework of the future from the very start. Children are not unintelligent. Therefore, false promises can be detrimental. Alternatively, harsh methods can also incapacitate the student making fear the dominant experience of learning,” she argued. She continued that the regime in dance including aspects of how our bodies can be moulded, the pushes and the stretches, and the ease with sweat itself, must be introduced into the child’s life harmoniously. “Then, in the one hour they spend with you, they will not even know how much of their body and mind they have put into dance. That is good teaching. It is difficult to achieve, of course and it is not a packaged formula. This is also why the pedagogy for dance has not been written yet.” She reasons that teachers must treat their students as equals, converse with them regularly, contextualise adavus and items and even be willing to learn from their students. Leela invited two of her students, Aditi and Christopher, and demonstrated warm-up exercises that should be mandatory before every class, spoke of postures that go uncorrected and even showed varied teaching options for simple adavus.

Aditi narrated an anecdote that spoke volumes about untapped creative potential among children and missed moments of happiness in teaching.

“I learned this exercise from Akka (Leela) where I sit my students down in a circle and ask them to narrate a story using mudras. Each one has to narrate one line of the story and the person sitting next has to continue from there. So, it began with a hunter chasing a deer to kill. One of my students felt bad about the deer getting killed. So she introduced a line about how a little boy ran behind the hunter pleading with him not to kill the deer. But then, as a group, they decided that the deer has to die in the story. So one of them promptly said, “The boy spoke to the hunter but the hunter was deaf!”

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