Anjani Ambegaokar

Anjani Ambegaokar's father was a famous physicist in India, but “from the moment I was born, it was his dream that I learn to dance,” she told NEA interviewer Mary Eckstein. “So I started learning Bharata Natyam, the South Indian dance form, when I was 3 years old. The only teacher in Baroda was a Bharata Natyam teacher. I still remember vividly a couple of my pieces that I learned at that time — you know, your first teacher makes a very strong impression on you.”

At 7, Ambegaokar began studying Kathak, a 4,000-year-old North Indian classical dance form, with Pandit Sundarlaljee Gangani. “And I got attached not only to him but to the dance,” she said. “Something about Kathak that suits my personality — the energy, the communication, the informality of the form. It's stylized, but it has a lot of openness about it, and I'm that kind of a person, you know.”

In 1967, Ambegaokar immigrated to the United States. In California, she established the Sundar Kala Kandra Dance School, which has trained hundreds of dancers. Her company, Anjani’s Kathak Dance of India, has performed around the world. She trained her daughter, Amrapali, who became the company’s principal dancer and has performed in Cirque du Soleil’s touring production Dralion.

As a choreographer, Ambegaokar has not been afraid to expand the traditional repertoire. “I go very strongly with my intuition,” she told Eckstein. “Whatever feels really, really right in my heart is what I decide to do. I believe that only if you are really passionate about the piece you are creating is it going to work.

“I do traditional productions as well as productions where I go beyond the tradition, pushing the boundaries of the tradition while looking deeper into the tradition to reach new concepts. Like when we did the collaboration ‘Soul to Sole’ with the Jazz Tap Ensemble. For me, it's just a matter of how can you give it a little bit of a twist, a little bit of a different direction, and still maintain the purity of the form.”

“The artist’s life is never easy,” Ambegaokar said, but there are many benefits, including “the little kids who started with me at the age of 5 or 6 that are now grown women, married with kids of their own. They are all my extended family. They are part of what I've done and what I am. Even if they don't dance right now, they're always in touch. They want their kids to start dancing. Kathak is always part of everything that they have done so far and continue to do.

“There are two main aspects in Kathak dancing: the technique and the expressive part. The expressive part is the storytelling, the facial expressions, the ability to portray any person or any mood. That's the beauty of Indian dance. And then the rhythms, the rhythms and the footwork that we do with the ankle bells. For someone to be able to be equally good in both is always a challenge. I try to teach both on an equal level starting from the beginning so when they become full-fledged dancers they can do both equally well.”

Ambegaokar’s own devotion to her art is complete, organic. “All my prayers are through my dance, you know. I mean, it's just beautiful to have that because as we believe in our tradition, the dance. All the Indian dance forms, including Kathak, came from the gods. And then the Shiva and Krishna and all of them danced, and it's been passed on to us. … It's just total passion. It gives me so much peace within myself, and there is amazing excitement in the peace, too, you know. Being peaceful can be very exciting, too.”