MALAYSIANS KINI Transforming lives with movement. That is the motto of an initiative set-up two years ago by two best friends, targeted towards underprivileged children around the Klang Valley.

The founder of LS Creation, Lavanya Selvaratnam, is a psychology lecturer with a background in Biomedicine. Her partner, Saisuetha Satchithanatan, is a civil engineer.

Both of them share a love for the Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam.

Lavanya started dancing at the age of six and it has now been over 30 years. “My mother first took me to the dance class when I was four. But because Bharatanatyam is taught by a teacher who holds a stick... that’s how the basic music is taught. When I saw the teacher, I ran away,” she recalled.

Saisuetha, on the other hand, was 21 and had just completed her degree in civil engineering when she decided to pursue her passion for the dance.

With their combined experiences, they embarked on a journey to share how the dance has transformed their own lives with other young girls.

The two currently run weekly classes for children from low-income areas around Lembah Subang, as well as at several children’s homes.

After all the hard work, LS Creations recently staged their first Bharatanatyam public performance, featuring some 40 students.

They recently sat down with Malaysiakini for an interview over coffee and shared the ups and downs of teaching the girls, and life lessons behind the ancient art form.

Here is their story, in Lavanya’s own words:

I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT DANCE. Dance has given me so much. I feel children these days, they go in so many negative directions.

They get involved in various things... as teenagers they fall in love with somebody older, they run away. Then they get into some difficulties.

Then it’s drugs, then it’s fighting, and all these kinds of negative things happen.

SO I CAME UP WITH THIS IDEA. We started approaching schools and all that. Some were supportive, some were not. We approached the principals.

These low-income areas, there has to be somebody who actually passes the message around, get the children together... So somebody has to support us in that sense.

That wasn’t quite easy but somehow we managed.

IT WAS QUITE A CHALLENGE making them understand the commitment and the passion. There are more challenges from adults than from children.

Making the adults understand what it is about is quite challenging.

WHAT WE AIM TO DO, THROUGH DANCE is we want to build character.

We want to build their self-esteem. We want to give them the self-confidence to move ahead with life through dance.

Generally what people do is, the focus of the teachers is, just dance. It is all about the dance.

But our focus is the character, and the dance is the tool to build character.

BHARATANATYAM WAS CREATED many years ago when there was a ‘diminishing of civilisation’. It was a method of sending a message out to the people, to bring back civilisation through an artistic manner.

To actually bring out character in people. To build people. That was the initial idea of Bharatanatyam when it came about. Then somewhere along the way it evolved into the various forms.

The aesthetics of it started to become more forward and more enhanced. So we feel that Bharatanatyam, the dance itself, is a tool to build the person.

When you learn the dance you automatically get the discipline, persistence, all that comes into you.

PEOPLE ALWAYS HAVE A MISCONCEPTION that Bharatanatyam is about Indians and our Hindu gods. But actually no. It is an art form. It is an art form that consists of your body and your mind integrating together.

So your body and your mind has to integrate together when you master the art.

When you start, you start off with your body first. You attune your body first. And when your body is attuned, you start on the more advanced steps. Integrating with your mind.

YOUR BODY AND MIND BECOME ONE. When your body and mind become one, the psyche changes. It becomes positive.

And when everything is attuned, everything is coordinated, it is all balanced.

There is very slim chance of you going in a negative direction when your body and mind are integrated and everything is attuned in one direction.

So the dance form itself gives you that. Bharatanatyam itself gives you that.

I AM HERE TODAY BECAUSE OF THE DANCE PRESENCE IN MY LIFE. And that is why I want to do the same for somebody else.

Because dance has given me that. So I want to go to the children so they too can become somebody because of dance.

DANCE IS A GOOD FORM OF EXPRESSION. For the children to express whatever they are going through... It is a place where they can express themselves.

They get in touch with themselves. They do something that they enjoy and love.

Like in Lembah Subang, they still come for practice even when it rains.

It’s the whole character that we saw. So it was an amazing experience for us.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS ANY CHILD OR TEENAGER NEEDS. They need the resource, a person that they can trust. And they need that something to hold on to.

It can be music, it can be an art form, it can be martial arts, it can be anything. If these two things are present in a child’s life or a teenager’s life, it will help boost them up.

They don’t necessarily need to be successful in that art form or whatever it is, but it will boost them and they will go in a positive way.

PEOPLE USUALLY THINK THAT DANCING, MUSIC, MARTIAL ARTS AND SUCH ACTIVITIES ARE A HINDRANCE TO ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. That is such a wrong perception.

All these actually boost a student’s academic performance... All these build a child’s character.

That was the objective of the show. To create the awareness among the guardians and parents, and to build self-esteem within children.

So now that they have gone on stage, it was a big show, there were 400 people in the audience and all that... Now they feel that confidence.

PARENTS USUALLY THINK DANCE IS JUST A HOBBY. It is something that will distract a child.

Not only parents, but also in the homes that we teach. The administrators and the committee members also feel that this is just a dance.

It is just something extra that they do in their free time. So if anything comes about, the first thing they will stop is dance class.

They look at it as something which is not helping... like stamp collecting, something like that.

‘WE NAMED OUR SHOW BREAKING BOUNDARIES’. A normal Bharatanatyam, usually the standard procedure is that you must do your ‘salangai pooja’ where you must tie the bells around your ankle, that is the first stage.

They will never put a student up on stage unless they have done that.

So we actually put our students on stage without doing that.

In order to properly graduate from the dance, it takes about eight to nine years

THIS SHOW HAS MADE A DIFFERENCE. When the administrators of the NGOs that we teach, the guardians and parents see their child dancing like that on stage, it makes a difference for them.

And I believe it has made a difference within the children as well.

BEHIND ANY SUCCESS, IT TAKES SOMEBODY TO PUT YOU IN THAT SURROUNDING. For me, it would be my dad, my mum and one older brother.

I am the youngest in the family. I am also blessed with very, very good friends as you can see. So that has been fantastic for me.

Family and friends have been the backbone and have been the support to allow me to be wherever that I am.

THESE STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE THERE. You are solid and you are there.

It is a sense of security that you give them. “I can depend on you. You are my teacher and I can depend on you. I can count on you.” They need to know that and that’s what we give them.

Anything, we are here. And no matter what, we love you.

They get all the scolding, yes for sure. But at the end of the day, after all the scolding, they still know that I love them no matter what.

Malaysians Kini is a series on Malaysians you should know.

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