A dream turns true

SHE LOOKS so young for her two score and twenty years. A decade past the Biblical milestone of longevity, she is still as sprightly as a 20-year old with a mind that is agile and artistic. In fact, except for those tell-tale lines on her face, nobody can say that she has seen so many summers.

Gloria Mandelik is a dancer who was born in Florida, grew up in the south of France and lived through the most captivating of experiences.

One of them was dance. She mastered several of it, including the ballet, flamenco and Bharatanatyam, and when one looks at her early photographs, she has a striking Tamil look. Gloria is, in case, several shades Indian, having lived in Chennai for many years under the cosmic radiance of Rukmini Arundale and her Kalakshetra.

There Gloria literally belonged, having dinner with Rukmini on the rooftop facing the Adyar river. Banana leaves and vegetarianism spiced up Gloria's artistic adventures.

Gloria's wanderlust later took her to the Dhananjayans, who taught her Kathakali with enormous love and patience. Yet, Gloria's high strung temperament would sometimes get her emotional and teary-eyed, which the dancing couple tackled with admirable understanding. "They would go inside the kitchen and get me a cup of steaming hot tea, and my mood would swing back to the normal", she says.

Gloria lived with the Dhananjayans for a while not just learning a great art form, but imbibing a totally novel culture. "I always figured the man and his wife as Shiva and Parvathi, and I often felt that I was witnessing a continuous 'Padam' by a couple absolutely devoted to each other."

She felt at home, of course. "But even when I first landed in India - it was in Mumbai - in 1968, I had this strange feeling that I had arrived somewhere quite familiar". Her halt there was only for a few months. It was Chennai where her heart really belonged, and her first experiences were deeply touching and wonderfully encouraging.

At Kalakshetra, Rukmini was highly impressed with her. She told her that "you have the perfect positions from the ballet and excellent rhythm from the Spanish dance. You would do well in Bharatanatyam".

Gloria's hard work was winning her rewards. Afterall, she had her initial lessons in ballet when she was barely four. It was at Monte Carlo.

Her passion took her to Nice and Los Angeles, a passion she tempered with other forms of art. In Paris, she fell in love with the brush and the stage.

At 19, she moved to Madrid, where she studied flamenco under renowned teachers, and when she became the star dancer with Pilar Lopez (who is about 95 today and still living in the same city), the world seemed to be at her feet. She could have toured the whole of Europe, and life was smiling on her.

But she threw away all that to come to India, a country that had been in her dreams for a long time. "I first heard Indian music on the radio when I was four. I first saw an Indian dance when I was eight or nine in France. Jean Renoir's 'The River', shot in India, was yet another influence on me."

Gloria is an exception - at least in Spain. For most people there, India's art, particularly its classical dance, is beyond the scope of any feeling. "Spain has its own rich tradition of dance, and men and women love flamenco so much that they have very little concern for anything else. Spain, along with Russia and India, has the most fabulous dance culture in the world."

The few girls who come to Gloria in Madrid in their quest for comprehending Bharatanatyam (and, maybe Kathakali) are very special. They have been to India or read a lot about it. Tagore is very popular there, having been translated into Spanish. "I have been here for 41 years. Tagore was much sought even four decades ago", Gloria reminisces.

Gloria herself is now looking forward to visiting Chennai in order to meet old friends and, above all, refresh herself about a lovely culture that enriched her life and living when she was younger, a culture that she hopes would pep her up now as well as she crosses the seas.

GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN

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Section  : Entertainment