Choosing a Path

Who can be considered a “dancer?”

Adult Dance Student

by Preethi Sriram

I am an adult Indian dance student, and the concept of age can come into play at various junctures. At what age is a good age to start dance? When doing a quick online search on what age to start Bharatanatyam, the first answer that shows up in the search is the age of six. After an average of 7-8 years of instruction and practice, the student may be eligible for an Arangetram at the age of 14. That may be the most well-known traditional path, but it is interesting to see a different trend in dance in general. For instance, what about those who were not initially put in dance at the age of six, or they may have stopped dance in between and want to pick up the dance form again. At what age then would be a good time to start the dance?

This seems to be a less well-defined area and a newer path that is being created in society from its prior iterations. Also, with globalization, and the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion being subjects of focus, people are reassessing traditional norms and paradigms that may have been held. In the arts, this is something that also is being reassessed. Specifically, in dance, who can be considered a “dancer?” Should the dancer have a certain look? What sort of physical abilities should the dancer have? In a traditional paradigm, we may think “Oh the dancer should be fit” or the “dancer should be able to hear and see” or the “dancer should not have two left feet” or “oh the dancer should be of this background for this style of dance” and so forth. But then there are those who challenge these paradigms and help us to see the world differently.

For instance, in an article in the Times of India, a teacher of dance, notes that very few people realize that she had low vision. As a student, she had to forgo her chemistry course and instead took an academic course in Bharatanatyam, and then earned a diploma for teaching dance. The teacher notes how she is proud of being the first visually impaired person to take up dancing. In a post by TheBetterIndia a young girl who started dancing at the age of five, and then lost her left leg at the age of 11, could have decided to stop dancing, but