K. P. and Santha Bhaskar

 

Leading Lights of Indian Dance

 

Fifteen-year-old dancer Santha arrived in Singapore from Kerala in 1955 to join her husband, K. P. Bhaskar, who ran a small dance school. Today, Santha teaches at the Bhaskar’s Arts Academy’s teaching wing, Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society, which grooms over 800 students in mostly Bharatanatyam dance and Carnatic music.

 

Petite and poised, with nary a streak of white in her lustrous black hair, Santha Bhaskar has been a poster girl for the arts community. In 1968, she was featured in a series of postage stamps showcasing the traditional performing arts of the different ethnic groups in Singapore. Santha had arrived in 1955 to help run the dance academy her husband—Krishna Pillay or K. P. Bhaskar in short—set up. K. P. Bhaskar, who was born in Kerala, came to Singapore in 1952, teaching dance in his Joo Chiat flat to about 40 students.

Today, the academy is known as Bhaskar’s Arts Academy and it is the go-to place for Indian dance lessons and performances. The Academy’s teaching wing, Nrityalaya Aesthetics Society, at Stamford Arts Centre, has more than 800 students. They mostly learn Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance which originated from the temples of Tamil Nadu and is known for its graceful and sculpturesque poses. Bhaskar died in 2013 but Santha continues teaching the art form that brought her and her husband together.

Santha was only 15 years old when her mother told her that she was going to marry a man 14 years her senior. “I was scared of him because of our age difference and so at the beginning I would obey whatever he said,” Santha said of her early days with her husband. But Bhaskar’s tenderness, companionship and the way he complemented her personality played a role in her falling in love with him.

In Kerala, Santha had begun learning dance at the behest of her parents. She disliked it. Bhaskar was the opposite: he had loved dance since young. At 14, he ran away from home to study dance from a Kathakali master. His parents were farmers and thought that dance was not a respectable career. Kathakali, which originated in Kerala, is a dance-drama based on Indian epics. Dancers perform in ornate costumes and paint their faces in bold colours. Bhaskar received free lessons, so out of goodwill he secretly took rice from his parents’ home to pay his teacher.

Bhaskar introduced the Kathakali dance to Singapore in 1954. He formed a small dance group with members of the Malayalee community who were familiar with the dance. When he returned to Singapore with his new bride in 1955, the couple became dance partners on stage although Santha originally lacked confidence in performing.

Santha remembers Singapore in the 1950s as a sleepy colonial outpost. “Singapore was small, nice and cosy,” she recalled. There were “no crowds” and “everybody knew everybody”. They lived in Joo Chiat with a close friend of Bhaskar’s before the couple bought their own flat. Despite her young age and speaking neither English nor Malay, Santha said she adapted easily to these new conditions because of the hospitality. A friend of Bhaskar’s taught Santha how to buy provisions and how to pleat a sari as she had mostly worn pattu pavadai, a traditional skirt and blouse outfit, in India. The couple sought out friends from other ethnic communities and learnt dance from them.

They also travelled frequently to Malaysia to perform. At that time, it was difficult to get entertainment licences for arts organisations in Singapore. Translations of songs and their meanings had to be submitted to the authorities. To supplement their income, Bhaskar learned meditation in Switzerland, transformed their home into a meditation centre, and taught meditation. Santha picked up meditation in the 1970s as well and said she became more positive about life. Her initial discomfort with performing on stage eased and she realised that her “destiny was to teach dance and meet people.” The Bhaskars’ were, by then, Singapore citizens.

Bhaskar’s death capped a lifetime of contributions to Singapore’s arts scene. He wrote books on Indian dance, scripts for television including a 13-part series on Bharathanatyam and a 26-part series titled “Aspects of Indian Dance” and was the pioneering chairman of the Dance Advisory Committee overseen by the then-Ministry of Culture. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 1963. Santha has continued her husband’s passion for the arts, teaching at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Centre of the Arts in addition to grooming students at the academy. “He always said everything is possible,” she recalled. “When I say something is difficult, he would say, ‘Don’t think negative things. Think positively.’” Today, their elder son, Ananda Mohan, is the academy’s chief executive officer. The younger son, Ananda Ram, is a civil servant and daughter Meenakshy runs a branch of the academy in Sacramento, California, where she lives with her husband and two children. Meenakshy still choreographs and performs in the school’s productions from time to time. Santha was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1990 for her contributions to the development of Indian classical dance in Singapore. She continues to believe in the value of bringing traditional arts to the community. In an interview with the National Arts Council A-List website, she said, “I am not worried that traditional arts will die. If there is a need, they will survive. As artists, we learn to not expect everybody to appreciate what we do. We continue doing it because it’s our tradition—it’s a part of us, and we naturally want to pass it on.”

References

“A-List,” National Arts Council, http://a-list.sg/one-small-voice-santha -bhaskar/

“About Us,” Bhaskar’s Arts Academy, accessed March 2015, http://www.bhaskarsartsacademy.com/

Corrie Tan, “The Life! Straits Times Interview With Santha Bhaskar; Dance Of Love,”
The Straits Times, July 16, 2012.

Interview with Santha Bhaskar in March 2015.

 

 

K. P. Bhaskar
India, 1925–2013

 

 

Santha Bhaskar
India, b.1939