Megan

My teacher Phane J. Sen is a master teacher of the Indian Classical Dances Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam in Ohio. As such she has faced several unique challenges in the endeavor to teach American students a classical dance from India. One of the most impressive things about Phane is the gusto with which she has attacked issues such as language barriers, pre-conceived notions, prior dance training and the logistics of scheduling lessons for a wide range of students- from grade school to adult- that encompass enough time to adequately teach both theory and practical skills. Primary among these challenges is, of course, language. The spoken language of Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music is Sanskrit, which the clear majority of Phane's students have never heard spoken before, little say speak or understand themselves. This provided a challenge to the teaching of Bharatanatyam hand gestures- each individual gesture assignable to several different meanings. The lessons of these hand gestures are of course recited in Sanskrit, and Phane realized quickly her English-speaking students were floundering with their memorization of the lesson because they had no meaning, no context for the words. So Phane created a mini-dictionary in English and divided the lessons to aid her student's memorization process. Once the students understand the base names and meaning of the gestures, she goes on to teach the recitation. There is also no tradition of writing lessons or recording lessons in Bharatanatyam. The primary written text is a central, and ancient discourse called the Natya Shastra, which encompasses the performing arts. To help her students accustomed to curriculums oriented in writing, Phane has developed novel methods using both written diagrams and digital recording to help English speaking students progress through lessons while mastering the salient points of the lesson. These are few examples of the adjustments and innovations Phane has developed to effectively bring a long-standing classical dance to a body of students with likely little knowledge or background- artistically or culturally.