Two decades ago, Hema Rajagopalan transported to Chicago the customs of her native India where others had left them behind.
“The younger generation was coming to this country for furthering their own careers and financial status,” said Rajagopalan, a resident of Oak Brook. “I found they were losing their Indianess. . . . They were trying to become more Westernized.”
The answer to preserving their culture lay within bharatanatyam, a 3,000-year-old classical dance Rajagopalan has studied since age 6 and mastered to become a performer of international repute. In 1975, she founded the Natyakalalayam (temple of dance and art) School of Classical Indian Dance in Lombard to reconnect her people to their roots.
“I felt very strongly that dance would be one medium through which they could keep their culture and the traditional Indian values alive,” she said.
Since then, Rajagopalan has trained some 500 dancers–nearly all female–to portray the characters in Hindu mythological stories, while instilling in them a desire to embrace their heritage.
She sets high standards for her students to execute the movements with technical skill. It takes years of discipline to perfect the complex bare foot-stomping patterns, precise hand gestures and dramatic facial expressions, but that dedication pays off when Rajagopalan’s dancers bring bharatanatyam to life on stage.
On April 22, Rajagopalan’s students won in both categories of the competition in the Chicago Cultural Center’s third annual Rising Stars Dance Festival.
Students from elementary and high schools and dance academies in the Chicago area competed in either the junior division, ages 8 through 13, or the senior division, ages 14 through 19, said Carolyn Aguila, arts resource consultant with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
Ranked first out of 12 in the senior division for a performance honoring Shiva, the god of dance, were Deepa Rangachari, 14, and her sister, Rekha, 12, of Willowbrook. Sridevi Ranganathan, 8, of Lemont placed first out of six in the junior division for a dance in praise of Shiva’s wife, Durga. The winner in each group received a trophy and a $200 gift certificate to a dance clothing store.
The dancers’ presentation, confidence and maturity led the eight judges to award first place in both divisions, said Julian Swain, 70, who for 18 years headed the dance department of the ETA Foundation, Chicago’s major African-American arts organization. Swain has judged the competition every year.
“They were outstanding,” he said. “They looked as adult as if they were performing in a palace for the royal family in India.”
Kirby Reed, a member of Joel Hall Dancers, said he was spellbound by the artists. “Even if they were standing still, the slightest nuance caught your attention,” said Reed, who also teaches jazz dance at Joel Hall Dance Center in Chicago and has judged the event for two consecutive years.
Rajagopalan has had numerous accolades bestowed upon her. More than a dozen plaques hang on a wall of the home basement turned into a rehearsal hall.
She is a five-time winner of the prestigious dance choreography award given to several people each year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1983, she received the Gandhi Community Award, presented by the India Tribune in Chicago for outstanding community leadership.
In the past decade, bharatanatyam has become accepted by the mainstream dance audience. Each year colleges and universities across the country invite Rajagopalan to spend a few days teaching in their dance departments.
And this fall, she hopes to open a studio in downtown Chicago to expose the art form to more Americans.
Dance has been Rajagopalan’s inspiration. She took up bharatanatyam in the southern Indian city of Madras, where she was born. Six months after she started dancing, her family moved to New Delhi, but she returned to Madras each summer and winter to learn from the virtuosos.
When she was 13 years old, Rajagopalan began performing throughout India with her own group of musicians. At age 16, she entranced Parthasarathy Rajagopalan, a man in the audience. A year later they married. Indian marriages are generally arranged, but this was an exception.
Rajagopalan continued to dance, unlike her mother, who had studied bharatanatyam for fun and quit after her marriage. By age 19, Rajagopalan, who received a master’s degree in nutrition in India, was recognized as one of the country’s most promising young dancers.
Six years later, in 1975, she followed her husband to Chicago so he could pursue a master’s degree in business administration at Illinois Institute of Technology (he now works for MetLife Insurance Co.). They brought their only child, Krithika, now 22, who graduated from Loyola University, Chicago, in May and has performed in India.
After they moved to the U.S., the Rajagopalans socialized with other Indian immigrants and perceived that their children were undergoing an identity crisis. But with Hema’s influence, Indian culture would not be forgotten.
Seven girls ages 6 and 7 attended the first classes. Chandu Hanumadass, 27, of Oak Brook, was there that day. She studied bharatanatyam with Rajagopalan through her sophomore year at Loyola University, when her schedule left little time for dance.
In late April, Hanumadass, who is now a corporate and real estate attorney in Chicago, came back to Rajagopalan, who holds classes in a space she rents at Creative Montessori Learning Center in Lombard.
“She had a big part in my life by introducing me to the religion and to the classical music,” said Hanumadass, who emigrated from India at age 3. “She really loves her students. she hardly eats all day. She’s so engrossed in it.”
Celebrating the school’s 20th anniversary in January, Rajogapalan launched the Natyakalalayam Dance Company, composed of 15 dancers age 15 and up.
She has more than 200 students in the school. Most of them are children of Indian immigrants, but more than a dozen non-Indians have taken classes over the years.
They journey to Lombard from throughout the Chicago area for an hour of instruction on either Saturday or Sunday, depending on their level.
But when the dancers are gearing up for a performance, they practice on school nights and weekends in the spacious basement of Rajagopalan’s Oak Brook home.
At one end of the basement stands a 1,500-pound bronze statue of Lord Shiva through which bharatanatyam dancers are said to have evolved.
Many of Rajagopalan’s students are devout Hindus. For them, bharatanatyam forges the link between two cultures.
“We get to be Indian and we can be American,” said Deepa Rangachari, who was born in this country to parents from Madras. “I have a whole family here. I have a life in dance just here.”
Bharatanatyam’s goal is to uplift the dancer to a higher degree of spiritual consciousness. The dance consists of at least 26 single- and 32 double-hand mudras, the Sanskrit word for gestures.
During class students wear rayon or cotton pantaloons, a tunic and a sash, which the older girls sling over the breasts to avoid revealing their contours. Some also wear silver bracelets around their ankles.
For the stage, the dancers don silk costumes adorned with gold embroidery. They apply dramatic makeup and color their fingertips almost up to the first joint and outline their feet with red marker. Their rhythmic patterns are accompanied by the beat of a mridangam, a wooden drum.
Rajagopalan believes that by playing mythological characters, her students learn more about Hinduism than through reading.
Bharatanatyam demands a greater spiritual involvement, said Usha Ranganathan, mother of Sridevi, who won the Rising Stars Dance Festival competition despite being ill that day.
“She has come to know a lot of stories about the religion, the mythology, everything through dance,” said Usha Ranganathan, who studied bharatanatyam in Madras. “When she has to dance, she has to understand the song, she has to understand the story, every bit of it, for her to express herself well.”
If the dancers grow to appeciate Hindu philosophy, it is because Hema Rajagopalan does more than demonstrate movements, said Sudha Rajagopalan (no relation) of Naperville. Her 9-year-old daughter, Nithya, has been at the school for three years.
“She’s an excellent teacher,” Sudha Rajagopolan said. “She makes sure the kids understand what they are dancing . . . the meaning of the song.”
And just because the hour is up, doesn’t mean class is over. “If we don’t understand something, she will go on and on. She will never ever glance at the clock,” said Rekha Rangachari, who takes private lessons once a week with her sister.
Ganapathi Ramaswamy, 11, of Naperville said he has come to trust Rajagopalan during the past four years.
“You can tell her lots of secrets,” Ramaswamy said. “If you have problems, she’ll give solutions to them sometimes.”
“She’s there for us like a shoulder to lean on,” Rekha Rangachari said. “If you need somebody to talk to, she’s always there for you. She puts in her life for all of us.”
Happy campers
Bharatanatyam students flock to Hema Rajagopalan from all over the United States and Canada for a summer camp, held this year from July 31-Aug. 15. They take intensive dance classes for five hours six days a week. Rajagopalan has housed as many as 10 out-of-town students. The rest stay with other Indian families.
The camp costs $700 for classes and $300 for room and board. But in those rare instances where students don’t have the means to pay, they teach classes in exchange for a free ride.
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For more information about the Natyakalalayan School of Classical Indian Dance, call 708-323-7835.
