Planning Post 4

Update from Planning post 3
 If you are planning a visit to India before your arangetram here are some tips.
 1. Dresses: I already mentioned this (see planning post 3). Some tailors are quicker/prompter than others. I went with Mr. Ponnurangam in Chennai. He was super nice and great service. Promptly delivered my dresses in 7 - 10 days which made it Recentpossible for me to get my photoshoot done in India.

 2. Jewelry: Your biggest purchase after the dresses is jewelry. This is a big ticket item (or small depending on what you want). I went for 1 set of temple jewelry for my daughter and artificial for everything else. We needed 4 sets for the two of us. Actually let me rephrase that. You don't NEED 4 sets at least not completely. Because the headset you dont change (haven't seen a change so far in any arangetrams. It's a pain to change it and the interval won't be long enough so we just let that be)
Here's what you will need

1. Head set: This includes the 3 way nethichutti, chandran, suryan. Additionally rakkodi and jadavillais (braid jewels- optional). Out of this it is best to have the nethichutti chandra suryan and rakkodi in temple jewelry if possible. The silver base makes it super light otherwise it might weigh you down. If you are debating about buying temple jewelry and are tight on budget, this is one thing you should consider. 
2. Necklaces: One short and one long typically. The short one is a choker/addigai type. The long one can be pearls or regular manga malai. Recent times, people have gone with golden beads for the chain with a nice kemp padakkam. 
3. Earrings and maatal: This is again something I would recommend in temple jewelry. Again for the same reason. Also temple jewelry can be polished and reused for a long time. 
4. Bangles: Artificial is fine. Get some gold imitation bangles for filler. Too many bangles won't work great. 2 stone bangles with about half dozen gold in between will work nicely for each hand. 
5. Belt: Stone ones or recently there are plastic (yes plastic) ones with gold polish that are super lightweight and look great on stage. 

Out of these #1 is constant for the entire program. #2-#5 can be changed during interval. Note however that each change adds roughly 3-5 mins extra to get ready so plan accordingly. 

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and list. Please use your judgement as well as consult with your Guru for any inputs. 

Hindsight is 20/20. After the dancing the tassles of the necklaces get all sweaty and sticky and most often than not end up being cut. So when you purchase please get yourself some additional tassles or go for metal chain link clasps. These are easier to open and won't be damaged. It's a little more irritating on the back of the neck so weigh your options. In any case get a few extra tassles so you can refinish your jewelry after the event. 

For people wondering if you should deck your daughter in gold simply because you can, DONT. Gold is one of the softest metal (which is why we add copper to make the jewelry stay in shape) so it can be easily damaged while dancing. Plus it's a madhouse during arangetram, you don't want the added responsibility of taking care of your gold. Do yourself and everyone else a big favor stick to temple or artificial jewelry. As an added bonus, these look much better in photos than gold. 

Budget: Again similar to sarees, this is as much or as little as you want to spend. To give a rough costing I bought the following in temple jewellery - 1 headset, rakkodi, jimikki, maatal, choker and manga malai. This cost me about 65K INR. The artificial sets were about 2-3K. I opted for kaasumalai type for one of the sets and that cost about 5K (1gm gold types). The pricing depends on rate of silver etc so plan accordingly. When picking artifical jewelry try to pick bigger stones and maroonish shade so that it doesn't look very different from the real deal. 

3. Accessories: Vijaya stores is da place. You will need - false hair, donut ring (for the rakkodi),  kunjalam, artifical flowers (usually the semicircle and the hotdog). I also bought a lot of u pins, bobby pins etc but didn't end up using them since it was taken care of by the makeup person. 

4. Bells: You will need 2 sets of 4 row bells. GJR in triplicane has good sonorous ones with soft backing. You will use one for practice and most likely will use the same for dancing. the second one is simply to be blessed and handed over. It's simply a backup. It is best to dance in the bells that you are used and broken into. 

Ok this post became much longer than i intended to. Will stop here for now. rest in next!

Planning Post 3

With the date nailed down and the theatre booking out of the way here are the next ones.

1. Getting your dresses. The dresses will have to be made in Chennai (I am not aware of any tailors in US yet). In any case it would be cheaper to get it done in India. As of this post, the cost of dresses involves 2 factors. 1. cost of the saree purchased (this is upto you, Sarees come in a wide range so pick your budget). and 2. stitching charges. This can run anywhere from 3500 to 5000+ depending on the tailor and design etc. I don't yet know how long it will take the tailor to deliver the dresses but my plan is to get the dresses ready during my december visit and get the photo shoot done in India.

2. Photo and video arrangements: There are 3 main parts to this.

1. The photo shoot. This is mainly for printing invitations, brochures, blowing up for your wall etc.  Remember that this will be in a much more controlled environment and better lighting than the live event so the pictures will turn out prettier (hopefully). There is no flash photography during the actual event for obvious reasons. You can get it done either in US or in India (assuming you live in US). I am not suggesting that you travel to US for this sake. There is a cost difference of course but more importantly there is a quality difference (or so I am told - yet to be validated). You get better makeup and dance aware photographers in India for a fraction of the cost. The downside is of course that you have to travel to India (if living abroad) and line up your ducks so that you can finish it within the short visit. Remember your photoshoot must preferably be in the arangetram costume so the dresses must be ready too. Something for you to consider. 
2. Day of the event photos
3. Day of the event videos.

Right now 2-3 are so far away that I have no particular inputs. More later. 

Arangetram update - more tips

FINALLY!!! Our Arangetram will be on JULY 9th 2016. Super excited, wait who am I kidding, am super scared. It seems like an unsurmountable mountain. We have 230 days to go at the time of this post. Not a whole lot of time if you think about it. Assuming we practice 1 hr each day that's only 230 hrs or 10 days of continuous practice.  That gives me the butterflies in my tummy. We were originally hoping for an August dates but due to theatre snafu, we have now moved to July 9th 2016.

We started learning our Varnam and are half way there. Game plan from now to July 9th. Goal is login 500 hrs of personal practice between now and july 9th. We can achieve this by dancing at least 1 hr everyday and by increasing to 2 hrs from january (gives us 190 additional hrs) and increase to 3+ hrs from May. Lofty goals. We'll see how it goes.

We also started meeting with our mentor Prasha from yesterday.
She gave us several important tips
1. Practice, Practice, Practice. Nothing will help you other than hitting the floor and hit that floor HARD.
2. Put a calendar in front of you where you can count down to your event and make sure you make every day in between count. Mark yourself off for every day that you practice. And do that in plain sight so it becomes your wall of shame.
3. Record yourself while dancing and watch it. This is what you are going to subject your audience to.  If it sucks, correct it and make it better. This will give you an "audience" view of your dance.
4. put markers on your dance floor to help you with placement. mark the centre and corners. Also mark a point above your eye level so you can train to focus on that spot.
5. improve your stamina by dancing your jathis back to back to back. Prepare a CD with all jathis together and all sancharis together and start dancing.
6. Start writing notes. Video taping aunty is optional but writing down stuff is not. It really helps to create a mental map of the steps. Once we start learning more and more pieces, the notes will become a reminder.


More later.

Tips for arangetram or any stage for that matter

Few tips that I learnt over the last few days that I would like to share.

1. There are two portions to a successful debut/project (as I see it). The memory and the execution. I am assuming that the knowledge is a given. There is little you can do about memory until the actual pieces are learnt. What you can focus now is on execution. Making sure you do good araimandi, keeping the smile intact, doing good hand gestures (mudras). Correcting your posture and your body lines. Treat every practice as a performance because what i find more often than not is that people tend to repeat the same mistakes from practice to stage.

2. On the memory part, don't fret if you don't remember something you learnt 2 years ago. Your aim is those 8 pieces that you are going to perform on stage. It doesn't matter if you don't remember your Natesa Kauthuvum if you are not performing it. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying don't improve your memory. You absolutely MUST. But don't stress yourself out if you don't remember old pieces.

Few tips I learnt in class last weekend (thanks Sharanya)
1. There is no "rest" period once you are on stage. Even when you are standing still you are still performing so don't be sloppy. This is very evident when we "walk back" after a jathi in varnam. Since the jathis are intense, there is a natural tendency to take a breather while walking back in preparation for a sanchari. Take the breather but still stay sharp. Focus your eyes, keep you gaze sharp and your steps clear and crisp.

2. This one has been told by aunty and repeated by Sharanya. Make sure that your movements are discrete (I don't  mean discreet) and not a continuous mess. A good litmus test is if the photographer were to take continuous shots of your performing your steps, is each one going to look clean? This is important when doing long korvais, take a moment to pause as you finish your Tha thai thai tha and move into thai thai DDT. Your ability to incorporate these pauses without losing the time signature or thala is what makes you a beautiful dancer.

3. A tip to remember long jathis - split them up. Go line by line instead of trying to learn all at once. That way each line is etched into your muscle memory and you have the ability to pause and pose for a picture because you know where it ends and the next one begins.

Planning Post 2

I mentioned the importance of dates and theatre booking in my last post. This is really important. The number of people learning Bharatanatyam is on the rise and a lot of them go for an arangetram. This wasn't the case in the yester years. Arangetram was for the seriously inclined dancers who were planning on pursuing this art form as a profession or even semi-profession. However, now,  a lot of them see arangetram as the culmination rather than the beginning of their artistic journey. It is not uncommon to hear of people do their arangetram only to completely stop dancing soon afterwards. There are several reasons for this including intervening high school years, lack of opportuntity, lost interest etc. You may ask how is this discussion relevant to theatre, it is extremely relevant. You see, most students performing arangetrams are kids under the age of 16 (which clearly excludes yours truly but I digress). So the best time for their arangetram is summer when the school is out so they can do a crash course before ascending the stage. That makes the months of June-aug (in US of course) the peak season for arangetrams. With only 13 weekends (or 26 days) and a limited number of theatres suitable for arangetrams and hundreds of students waiting to perform arangetram and be "done with it", finding a theatre is hard. The "good" ones - acoustics, capacity, pricing, location - are often booked 1 year in advance.

If you have a date in august, most school theatres may not open their booking until the school starts (that Aug 2016 dates might not even open up until school reopens Aug 2015). If you choose a date in July, it may be confirmed much earlier since there is least likelihood of conflict with school events. But then july is peak season for people to travel to India, so you may lose a bit of audience. So choose accordingly. 

Planning post 1

1. Finalize a date. Internalize it. Maybe even put a countdown to it so you can keep track of the time running.
2. Book the venue. This is important and possibly the first thing you would do even before any other dance planning.
3. Team up with other arangetram parents to divide and conquer. We made committees for everything and started having monthly meeting.
4. Here are some high level things you need to plan for
    a. Clothes/ stitching. This probably is best done in chennai. We're planning on a ranjani/gayathri combo if we can find the right sarees. We'll see, keeping fingers crossed. Need to find a good tailor who can stitch on time.
    b. Jewellery: This is something you can pick up at Sukra in chennai. They have a wide variety.
    c. Photo Shoot: You will need high end professional photographs for invitation/brochure etc. Need to decide whether this can be done here in US or in India. Pros of India: Lower cost, better makeup. Cons: Tight schedules. Dress need to ready.
    d. Invitations: This is something we need to limit. Most people don't preserve or even take a second look. However, for some formal people, we will need invitations. so maybe a real formal one for aunty, and any elder guests/close family etc. And a one pager for the general invitation inclduing school. TBD. Most people can be invited via evite. Need to find from 2015 parents about return rate on evites. Maybe we need constant contact type emailer so we can track opens etc.
    e. Catering; Snacks/Dinner. TBD by Narayan.
    f. Foyer/Stage decoration. Can be handled as a team.
    g. Event Day Photo/video/webstream. TBD



Almost 8 months later, we are now pre-arangetram. Our 1:1 sessions will start on/after july 15. Super excited after seeing Prasha and Shivani today!! 

First Thoughts

It's been a wait, not long, but a wait nevertheless. Kavya and I started our dance classes together in 2010. I am conveniently discounting the 3 months of classes I had in Bangalore and about a year of class that Kavya had as well. I don't think either of us were serious enough about the classes back then. So truly, I would like to think, our classes began on Vijayadasami day in 2010.

We have been waiting for the nod from aunty that we are ready to take on the stage and can work towards arangetram. Arangetram, for those who don't know, is the solo debut performance for a dancer. I will probably do a "reference post" on arangetram later. This post is just my first thoughts.

When the moment arrived and we were told that we could plan for an arangetram in 2016, it was exciting and.... scary. It is one thing to dance with a group and somehow manage to put something together that looks nice. It is a completely different ball game to take on the stage for 3-4 hours by yourselves and do a good job of it. You have no classmates to peek at and correct yourself, you have no corner to hide and do your own thing, you have no room to make mistakes and hope you were invisible in the crowd. At the same time, this is the moment we have been waiting for. More later