Visiting Kalakshetra Foundation, Chennai

A song session under a banyan tree begins the day Girls in moth-wing saris, young men in white tunics Disperse to cottage-style classrooms in a forest Students follow after their teachers, learning by ear Soaking up the song cycles of Ghandarvaveda music Devotional strains ring out in this secular school Art is the vehicle, so a wanderer like me feels at home As Bach's chorales made me Christian at least in sympathy Now I peek into the dance theater, roofed in thatch Bharatanayam dancers are going through basic steps Bodies and heads tilt as if guided by inner gyroscopes As if all movements are encompassed in imaginary circles As if wearing elaborate headdresses that must not fall Carrying invisible pagodas of heads atop their heads Their steps seem placed in footprints of a larger being Self-presenting in freeze-frames, in precise iterations Like a bead-necklace of moments strung together in a story Like folkloric variants, or a myth coming down through time Every gesture an act of self-offering, yet always aloof: Pouring forth, maintaining, taking back, concealing- All these creative phases were embodied by Rukmini Devi From Theosophy's inner circle, founding this art school From ashes of patronage networks and prurient connoisseurship She brought devadasi dance into the modern world