Our Journey
Our Arangetram journey began in June of 2021 however our interest in Bharatanatyam began in 2016 when we were 9 years old. Before that, we had dabbled in Bollywood dance and had a few other dance experiences in jazz and ballet. Bharatanatyam was something completely new and different for us. When we first started Bharatanatyam we were intimidated by its difficulty however we loved going to class with Guru Sanjeeta so we continued dancing through elementary school. About 7th grade, the idea of having our own Arangetram started floating around. We had sneak peeks of what the process involved by watching our fellow dancers prepare for theirs and volunteering on their Arangetram days. This strengthened our desire to have our own Arangetram.
We began the process in the summer of 2021. Over the course of the summer, we learned most of our repertoire. The goal of the summer classes was endurance training, this started with us running for half an hour at the start of each class. By the end of that summer, we ran a 5K several times a week. The first dance we learned together was our Varnam. Learning the choreography for the Varnum, the centerpiece of our Arangetram, took us a month with 3 days of classes a week which were 2 hours long.
We started high school in September and returned to having only one class each week. During that time we learned the rest of the repertoire. We also began having yoga and meditation classes once a week with Shubhomoy Uncle (Guru Sanjeeta’s husband). These sessions assisted us in stretching and helping us focus during dance. By January we had our entire repertoire learned and focused on perfecting our dances to make the performance the best it could possibly be. In February, we had our photoshoot to gather our pictures for posters, the guest book, invitations, and the brochure. Getting our hair and makeup done for the photo shoot took about 4 and a half hours and taking pictures took around 5 hours. Overall it was a very long day but it was totally worth it.
In March we started doing the entire 3 hours repertoire 3 times a week. Later that month we had our first run-through with the Masters of Ceremonies at Wharton School of Arts. The first run-through gave us an idea of what we needed to work on to make the dances look effortless on stage. After that, in May we began doing the entire repertoire twice a day, once in the morning before school and another time in the evening.
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In June, we have classes scheduled five times a week at the Wharton School of Arts to practice the entire repertoire each weekday. This is intended to teach us how to present the dances on a larger stage. It is not going to be easy, but it is vital in order for the dances to become part of our muscle memory and appear seamless on stage.
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And so here we are quickly approaching our Arangetram and we hope that you can join us on our big day!!!