Perseverance pays

JAPANESE ARE said to be the most hardworking. This was the only native trait of Tomoko Okamura's Bharatanatyam performance at the Music Academy Mini Hall. Her big, expressive eyes, her footwork and movements appeared classically Indian.

On stage, she seemed to be at ease with the art form. But sans make up, at her Guru's dance school in Chennai, the strain of trying to imbibe the spirit of an alien culture showed on her face, even as her Guru, Uma Sundaram raved about Tomoko's hardwork - "I have students coming from many countries and all of them insist on taking a long break to go around India, but not the Japanese. These students refuse to take even a day off. Their enthusiasm is overwhelming".

Smiling coyly at the compliment, Tomoko says that there are quite a few from Japan who learn Bharatanatyam from various teachers in the city.

More interesting is Tomoko's love for Urdu with a graduate's degree in the language. But people's queries on why she chose Bharatnatyam and not Kathak seem to puzzle her.

"I have never tried to relate Urdu and dance, they are two different interests," she says. The artiste in Tomoko refuses to see the religious connotations of her pursuits. "I decided to study Urdu when I heard some Pakistanis in Japan speak," she says. "We have in our university professors to teach foreign languages, if the students wish to study them".

Sitting in the university library one day, Tomoko chanced upon a magazine on India and read through a piece on the natural beauty, arts, dance and music of Kerala.

The next thing she did was to take up a job, earned some money and set off to Kerala. Here she saw a ten-year-old girl dancing in a small gathering and found the music and movements so enchanting that she decided to return to India to learn Bharatanatyam. Tomoko took her initial lessons in the art from Yoko Ozawa, a Japanese conducting Bharatanatyam classes in Tokyo.

Later, she went to Ahmedabad and continued her training under Mrinalini Sarabhai, where she had her arangetram in 1997 before coming to Chennai.

Has she ever felt confused trying to understand the three religions - Islam through the study of Urdu, Hinduism through dance and her Buddhist roots?

"Never," she asserts. "Don't look at them, look into them and you will find it's the same values and emotions that guide us all. Bhakthi is common to all. We all pray and meditate," she philosophises.

Tomoko has her task cut out for the future - to share this understanding through dance with fellow citizens. She's aware it is not easy.

"May be not difficult either. May be, I can talk about Buddha (one of the Dasaavatars as described in the Gita) and his teachings through Bharatanatyam and bring the Japanese closer to this ancient Indian art,"declares Tomoko.

CHITRA SWAMINATHAN

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