Sujatha Venkatesh, a trained Bharatanatya dancer, took off to Geneva after marriage and it has been her home for the last 35 years. The dancer, continued to keep her passion for dance alive by starting the Omkara School of Indian Dance there, which also completes three decades.
Juggling between home and her dance school, Sujatha also squeezed in time to visit India and collaborate with dancers here. One such project that was born during one of these collaborations is Jala – The dance of water .
Trained under the late US Krishna Rao and Chandrabhaga Devi and later under Narmada, Sujatha takes us back in time to her childhood to explain the genesis of Jala ... “I would visit my grandparents in Peenya. There were farmers who always accompanied my grandmother to fetch water from a stream. That imagery stayed on in my mind as an imprint, especially how my grandfather would get upset when they ran out of water and how my grandmother would run off to fetch it. I always felt that the lack of water affected women more as it was their job to provide it for their family,” says the dancer, who then compares her imagery of water to what she saw in Switzerland.
“I saw snow-capped mountains. Snow is just another form of water, pure and ethereal, which would melt and fill the water bodies in and around Switzerland, which were always full. I also saw a spiritual connection with water in India and the world. It is used to purify and baptise in religions,” explains Sujatha, who decided “to use the tool of Bharatanatya to send across a social message” about water and Jala... came into being.
Sujatha says she did intense research, took texts from the Vedas and collaborated with musicians here to bring the dance alive. Music is composed and scripted by Balasubramania Sharma and Prasanna. She then choreographed the dance using Bharatanatya, folk forms, marital art and contemporary dance.
The “thematic dance production” Jala... will debut in Geneva in October 2018. “Bengaluru dancers will be a part of the Swiss tour. From religion, industry to everyday life, the dance looks at how water connects us all together,” she explains and adds that, “All profits from the Jala.. Swiss tour will go towards two NGOs — Helvetas Swiss, working in water related issues in Nepal and Nanhi Kali, working for girl child education in India.”
