00:00If you weren't a dancer, where would you have been?
00:10An astronaut, I think.
00:13Traveler.
00:14She did not like dancing when she was growing up.
00:16You know, she had this dream of being a doctor,
00:18but she got married off at 15 and ended up being a dancer.
00:21So I started choreographing my own dances,
00:24and nobody dared to correct me or ask me why you did that.
00:28That freedom was there for me.
00:42When you look at the history of the community,
00:44just like many other ethnic communities out there,
00:46in the early days, you mainly learn about men.
00:49Mrs Sanda Bhaskar is one of the rare female names that stood out to me.
00:54As a curator, I don't think we could have done an exhibition
00:57on the Malayali community without including their stories inside.
01:02She was born in 1939 in Kerala, South India, to a Malayali family.
01:08Everybody in the family learned dance and music.
01:11She did not like dancing when she was growing up,
01:13and she told me so many times that she would fake a tummy ache to get out of dance.
01:19She really liked science, and she really liked math.
01:23She told me, you know, if I could go to the university, I would be so happy.
01:27My mother ended up in Singapore by accident, through marriage.
01:31Interestingly, a lot of people thought that Mrs Sanda Bhaskar
01:35who founded the Bhaskar's Arts Academy,
01:37but it was actually her husband, Mr KP Bhaskar.
01:39His mission in life was to spread his love for the Indian arts around the world.
01:44He called his brother back in India to help him look for a bride,
01:48and they found my grandmother.
01:51So February, we got married in the beginning of February.
01:53So February, March, April.
01:55By May, first week, we already came to Singapore.
01:58My grandfather definitely brought my grandmother on an adventure.
02:05This marked the start of a 16-year-old girl's adventure
02:08to grow a dance academy from the ground up,
02:11with her new husband in their new home.
02:16When she first landed in Singapore,
02:18she used to say that, I was just amazed by the multiculturalism
02:22living amongst all these other ethnicities
02:25she only ever read about in her history books.
02:28Her first reaction was that she needed to be able to communicate
02:31because she only knew how to speak in Malayalam.
02:34She joined the British Council for classes in English,
02:37and then just language.
02:38She learned some Mandarin, she learned some Malay,
02:41just enough to survive,
02:42and she very quickly wanted to learn Chinese dance.
02:45She actually learned the ribbon dance, the sleeve dance, the sword dance.
02:51Butterfly Lovers was my mother's first cross-cultural collaboration.
02:55She saw the movie, the 1950s movie, in the movie theatres,
02:59and she came back and she was just talking about
03:02what a lovely story it was for dramatising in dance.
03:06The story is about an ancient China where a woman was not allowed to study.
03:12But this girl, Zhu Ying Tai, she really wanted to study,
03:17so she dressed up as a man to attend school,
03:20and that's where she met Liang Shan Ho,
03:24and they fell in love.
03:29I could see how my mum was so inspired by the story.
03:32A lot of themes that are very similar to Indian culture too.
03:36The whole idea of women not learning, not being able to go to school.
03:40I think this was back in 1958.
03:42It was classical Indian dance,
03:45but they wore Chinese opera costumes for the performance.
03:50Bharatanatyam is an ancient classical Indian form
03:53that is the original dance form that my grandmother was trained in.
03:58I think it would have been really different for the people of the time
04:01to see Butterfly Lovers, a well-loved Chinese story,
04:04performed in Bharatanatyam.
04:06She liked choreography more than I think anything else.
04:09I feel like she had so many ideas,
04:11and they're just waiting to be explored.
04:17But over the next 10 years,
04:19it wasn't easy to keep the Bhaskar's Arts Academy going.
04:24My parents were very trusting.
04:26People cheated them a lot.
04:27People would hire them for productions.
04:29After the performance, they would turn around and say,
04:32I'm really sorry, we didn't have any money.
04:34The second biggest challenge was finding the number of students.
04:37There weren't very many Indians who could afford to dance in those days,
04:41so they had to travel to Johor, Penang,
04:44Pahang, Ipoh, Melaka, just to survive.
04:48When Singapore became independent,
04:50I shared lots of students actually in Malaysia,
04:52but because of the separation,
04:54it made the travel there a bit more difficult.
04:57You have to make a living,
04:59so I had to be more aggressive than the local people.
05:02Trying to support us in all that was really a difficult time.
05:05How do you give your children the best education
05:08and the best opportunities when your income is already so small?
05:14They just needed to get the work out there.
05:16My mother wanted to change how she did Bharatanatyam
05:21only because they needed to survive in Singapore.
05:24Visually, how do you make it appealing to someone
05:27who didn't know anything about Bharatanatyam?
05:29Make it palatable for someone who's not Indian.
05:34I think any art form tends to morph and evolve in the diaspora,
05:38but how it grew in Singapore is totally unique
05:41because of what a melting pot Singapore is.
05:43You have Chinese, Malay, Singaporeans and Eurasians,
05:46and so at the time, the British living in Singapore.
05:49So many things I learned by watching people.
05:54We used to perform together,
05:56so we used to perform together,
05:59all ethnic groups performed together in one stage,
06:03shared same stage,
06:05and then at times we used to collaborate together.
06:11When I started choreography classes,
06:13that's when I clicked,
06:14oh my God, my mom is a genius!
06:16Because she'd never had any choreography classes,
06:18and she was using all of the choreography techniques already
06:22when in the 70s.
06:24I was like, this is my mother!
06:27Totally new level of respect for her.
06:30She changed Bharatanatyam into what it is in Singapore
06:34with her ideas.
06:35She started doing group choreography,
06:37which was unheard of in the 50s
06:39because Bharatanatyam is a solo dance.
06:41She incorporated all of the spacing elements
06:43that you use in folk dance and Chinese dance
06:45and ballet into her dance.
06:47When I was younger, she was criticized for her work.
06:50People who came from India
06:52and started teaching in Singapore would say,
06:54that's not really Bharatanatyam.
06:56She always rose up and said,
06:58you know, I am not doing anything bad,
07:00I'm not being disrespectful to the art form,
07:02I'm just modifying it to survive.
07:04And for the art form to survive,
07:06she definitely inspired everybody else
07:09to take the form and do something new with it.
07:16As her choreography and teaching career took off,
07:19Santa's past made a reappearance in her life
07:22when she was 77 years old.
07:25Getting even a very basic understanding
07:27of the complex quantum world
07:29and a physic research program took much effort.
07:32I decided that this was an idea
07:34I wanted to choreograph a dance with.
07:37When she got the opportunity at NUS
07:39to work with the Department of Quantum Physics,
07:41I think she was the first one to raise up her hand
07:44and say, yep, I'll do it.
07:45If I travel around the world,
07:46I don't know whether I can come across
07:48any other Indian artist who has done
07:50such a collaboration before.
07:53Thinking about it, I got goosebumps.
07:54I do believe that she enjoyed
07:57bringing the science into her practice
07:59because that was a part of her
08:00that she had to put aside.
08:03I remember coming home and they were on the sofa
08:05and my father was talking about the black hole,
08:08explaining it to my grandmother
08:10and she was like writing notes down.
08:11She went to the university to attend those lectures.
08:15She was in her 70s, yeah.
08:17I was actually in the piece.
08:19One of it was about particles.
08:22There was one that was intertwining.
08:24Even the music at some points was a bit unusual.
08:27It was like electronic music.
08:29Everything was like, it didn't look right
08:31but it made sense.
08:35I think to a certain extent,
08:36you have to be childlike to be creative.
08:40And that was my mother.
08:43In the 1950s, the Bhaskar's Arts Academy
08:47started with just a handful of students.
08:50But it grew to more than 2,000 strong over the years.
08:54Everywhere I went, Bhaskar's Arts Academy
08:56would always stand out.
08:58It's always the name that we hear.
09:01Mid-80s, I think, is when it started to get better.
09:04They found a space at Stamford Arts Centre
09:06and that's when things started to really,
09:09really boom for us, I think.
09:12I think we were there for 29 years
09:14and at that point of time,
09:15it was our biggest piece that we've had.
09:17We had so many students.
09:19It was always busy.
09:21It was always noisy.
09:22Feet stamping on the ground or drums playing.
09:25The scale of the productions really upped at that time
09:29because we grew, we had more students,
09:31we had more money.
09:33I often saw her appearing in the news
09:35and I noticed that Bhaskar's Arts Academy
09:37had actually done a few performances
09:40during the National Day celebrations.
09:42She was actually the longest-serving tutor
09:44of Indian classical dance in NUS.
09:47A lot of her students would either call her auntie
09:49or they would call her grandmother.
09:51The National Heritage Board in 2021
09:53presented her with the
09:54Stewards of Intangible Cultural Heritage Award.
09:57In 1990, I believe, she was also awarded
09:59the Cultural Medallion Award for Dance.
10:01It's the highest accolade that's presented
10:03by the Singapore government.
10:05As a young Indian girl in the society,
10:07I always felt like one day I want to become
10:09as well-known as her.
10:11She never sought out any accolade.
10:13Whatever happened to them came
10:15because they were on that river.
10:21We didn't see it coming at all.
10:24We all thought that she had a good
10:2610, 15 more years to live.
10:28I remember that morning she woke up.
10:32She drove herself to NUS to teach
10:35and then after that she headed to the
10:38performing space where we were having
10:40the opening ceremony of our 70th year festival.
10:44She said that she wasn't feeling so well
10:46so she sat down and she asked for a drink.
10:49My auntie went to get her a drink
10:51but when she got back to my grandmother
10:53she was already slumped over the table.
10:57It happened at the place that she loved.
10:59She brought all of us up in that studio
11:02and to her, that was what fed her kids
11:07and nurtured the next generation of dancers.
11:33I miss her voice.
11:43I miss her wisdom and I miss her...
11:46She was just an incredible person.
11:49I would not be who I am today
11:51and be in the arts, I don't think,
11:53if it weren't for the experience I had through them.
11:59When I was really young, I would sneak
12:01into her class and she would see me
12:03so I would lie down on her lap
12:05and watch her teach her classes.
12:08My teaching style, even my dancing style,
12:11I think they all kind of go back to her.
12:14For me, she has always been my biggest inspiration.
12:17People ask me, you know,
12:19what do you want to be when you grow up?
12:20I say, I want to be just like Amuma.
12:22She told me that if it ever gets in the way
12:24of your dreams and your happiness,
12:26close it down.
12:27But it's 70 years of legacy,
12:30nothing like it anywhere in the world.
12:32They were very, one of the first artists
12:34in Singapore to stand up and say,
12:36proud to be Singaporean,
12:37this is our Singaporean art form.
12:39I'm not going to apologise for what we are.
12:41Carrying on that legacy for them is important to me.
12:44I am who I am because of that.
12:47No matter what, she made sure that
12:4970 years later, there is still a school standing.
12:52Baskar's Arts is still standing
12:54and it is now expanding.
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