Mothers by daughters - My mother - Ileana Citaristi

I was rehearsing for my new production 'Karuna' inspired by Mother Teresa's life when the phone rang on the 2nd of August: “Ile, mother has left us one hour ago.” My brother's voice was choked; the phone fell from my hands. She had been sick for the last few months. I had visited her thrice in the hospital, last time in July, along with the members of my troupe. She had been looking forward to our July program in Bergamo, my home town. We had been talking about it over the phone, making plans about where the artistes would stay and which items we should do, until that fatal brain hemorrhage happened in February, after which she had been silent, closed in her own world, but still alive, still listening to our tales, giving a few signs of recognizing us like the tears which dropped from her eyes when I first visited her in the hospital in March.

She was not a dancer or a musician or an artist of any sort; she has been a devoted wife all through her life. I used to envy my father and at times be jealous of him. Even during the few days I would return home, I rarely could have her all by myself. I always thought it was my right perhaps because during my childhood, I had been deprived of her presence and attentions since, being a headmistress, she used to leave home every day in the morning and come back only late in the afternoons.

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Mothers by daughters - Aai: my dearest mother - Jhelum Paranjape

Aai - that's what we say for mother, in my language - Marathi, the mother tongue of Maharashtra. Aai loved dance, she still does. She is a natural dancer. She was born with dance in her, and her body was nothing but grace and poise. But ...Why am I saying 'was'...? I should say, 'is'...! Today, even at 80 and with joint problems, one can see that inherent grace and poise...and a free spirit... she gets up spontaneously at any party when the music comes on and dances; she does that every year when it rains for the first time too, gets drenched dancing in the rains...I really am lucky, for I have inherited this natural grace and poise. And I must say her beautiful curvaceous bottom too... these three factors are a definite 'add on' for the Odissi dance style.

During the initial stages of my dance career, we all would rag her. Well...not me, but the others in the family... that my dance is actually her surrogate ambition. She was very fond of dance. But her father, a very traditional orthodox man who had stopped even my grandma playing the dilruba after marriage, just did not have the ability to understand that there is music in life, so how could she even dream or think about dance...?

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Articles - Dance and Martial Arts - Umesh Naidu

It has been nine years now; however long I journey, I realize it's a new discovery everyday, but I feel it started only in recent times. What began as a hobby and an unwinding exercise caught up with me as I grew up. I would swim, skate, play football, practice Taekwon-Do thrice a week and dance once a year. Craft making, drawing, writing poetry intrigued me and aroused my attention and I couldn't help but praise the beautiful things that began to inspire me.

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Interview - Shanta Serbjeet Singh - Ananda Shankar Jayant

Shanta Serbjeet Singh, for twenty-five years, columnist, critic and media analyst for The Hindustan Times, The Economic Times and The Times of India, India's most important mainstream English dailies, is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the premier Government cultural institution of India in 2000 and the same from Delhi Govt.'s Sahitya Kala Parishad in 2003 for her contribution to the field of culture.

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Mothers by daughters - Remembering Indrani: September 19, 1930 - February 5, 1999 - Sukanya Rahman

Indrani began to dance before she could walk. My mother made her stage debut at age five, performing the role of Maricha, the golden deer, in an episode of the Ramayana with her mother Ragini Devi and the dancer Gopinath.

For centuries the tradition of classical dance in India was passed down from mother to daughter through generations of dedicated devadasis or temple dancers, and nurtured in the sanctums of the great Hindu temples. This ancient art traced its origins to the rituals of the sacred Vedas, and its ancestry to the celestial exponents of the dance, the apsaras or heavenly nymphs and to the gods themselves.

Oddly, this dance tradition - which had fallen into decline and disrepute during British colonial rule - was helped out of obscurity and placed on the world stage by a daring young woman from the American Midwest. Born Esther Luella Sherman, in Petoskey Michigan in 1893, Esther was convinced she had been a Hindu in a previous incarnation and her mission in life was to dedicate her life to Indian dance. 

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Mothers by daughters - Amma: My inspiration - Roja Kannan

In life, you have to be 'somebody' and not a 'nobody.'
This is Amma's favorite quote...
She instilled this in us (my sister Meena and I) constantly, ever gently coaxing us into the innumerable activities we pursued in our young days like dance, music, acting and studying in that order.

Born in Badagara, a remote town in North Malabar, in Kerala, as the younger of the two daughters of a leading Barrister at Law, Amma was the apple of my grandfather Narayana Iyer's eye. She was spoilt, so to say, to a great extent because her older sister, Thangam, was older to her by almost 10 years. So Amma was the baby of the house where all her wishes were the family's command.

Even in that remote town where there was not much exposure to even a radio, she nurtured a passion for the fine arts, especially dance and an old Ravi Varma oil on canvas where Radha and Krishna were shown playing Raasa Leela was her favorite, in front of which she used to dance secretly trying out various movements and moves, to the haunting melody of P Susheela's "Gangai Karai Thottam Kanni Pengal Kootam Kannan Naduvinilay..." 

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Mothers by daughters - Rukku: My mother - Chitra Visweswaran

She never looked at the half-empty cup, only the half-full...gentle, soft-spoken, dignified, she was an epitome of inner strength and spirituality. The half-empty - half-full cup formula only applied to life with all its vagaries and not to any of my activities, be it dance, music, poetry, painting or writing.

My sternest critic, she was also my inspiration, my guide and my dearest friend. She gently encouraged me at what I was good at and firmly wooed me away from what would never become a strength with me. I remember the gentle smile, I remember the mischievous twinkle, I remember the uncompromising, firm gaze, I remember that look... at times pensive, at times deeply inscrutable, looking inwards... a look that I came to understand only as I grew older.
 
She was born the youngest in a family of eight children. Her father, TS Sankara Iyer was a leading luminary of South Indian society in pre-independence Delhi, the first Indian to become Financial Commissioner of Indian Railways, a visionary, a social reformer and a great patron of the arts. Her mother Seethalakshmi, a nine-yard clad Brahmin lady who supported her husband in all his social reforms, wrote songs, played badminton and was commented upon as being one of the most intelligent conversationalists by the then Viceroy of British occupied India. 

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