My family, my mother and father, are Sri Lankan immigrants who have grown and were raised in the midst of their very established and all encompassing South Asian culture. They transitioned from living within 1 to living in a completely different one that’s a melting pot of various different ideals, customs, and values. Though my siblings and I were born and raised America and participate and celebrate so many American customs and principles, our lives were not a complete loss of my ethnic culture and it in fact involved a great amount of influence in our lives.
Just one of the ways my culture steepened its hold onto my life is through dance. I was born, raised, and have lived in America which spouts a vastly different culture than that of my parents' native country. Where I didn't get much exposure through similar experience I did gain an awful lot of exposure through cultural arts which is what I most closely connect and channel. Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form, has immensely influenced the events and turns of my life and also helped shape me as a person. Having to learn its theory and history, travel for it, and learn to enjoy it helped me appreciate roots and use many of the values taught through it like patience and discipline to guide my personal life.
Bharatanatyam stems from thousands of years of movement through Indian culture and still remarkably prevails today in America in its modern and most universal form. I began to learn Bharatanatyam when I was merely 3 years old and a primal reason for this was that my mother was my dance teacher. She learned the dance form in Sri Lanka, furthered her studies in India and pioneered the movement of westernization of Bharatanatyam along with many other immigrant dancers from India and Sri Lanka.
Not only did I grow up dancing, performing and teaching bharatanatyam throughout my elementary years but Bharatanatyam extended its grasp onto my life also within my undergraduate experience. I’m on a Bharatanatyam dance team at Rutgers right now. We travel, compete, and compile with individuals and institutes across the national board to learn and expand our appreciation and cultivation for the art form.
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| A flier for my dance graduation in 2014 (My middle name is Luxmi) |
My culture allows me to bond and relate with many other individuals that stand in the same unique position of experiencing 2 very different but impactful cultures that influence life in its every day form. It also leaves room for ideological trailblazing. The morphing and contrasting of different principles and practices allows for different perspective which always leads to more knowledge that can be learned, taught and growing.
