Five heads turn at the same time, heads bow, eyes on the ground. A dance motion stilled for a photo. Janaki Anandavalli Nair stands on the left, her moves synchronised with the four students she brought down with her from Chicago. Their names are called out — Elizabeth, Swathi, Leah and Divya — as the teacher takes a break.
Between short gasps of breath, she speaks, of coming to perform Kuchipudi in Thiruvananthapuram nearly a decade after her last show, to make a tribute to her guru V. Mydhily on her birth month — Karkidakam.
“I come to my hometown once a year or once in two years, but then I haven’t danced in Thiruvananthapuram in a long time,” she says. There have been numerous shows in Chicago where Janaki runs a dance school called ‘Ananda Dance Theatre’ named after her mother — Anandam G. Nair.
The mother had enrolled her daughters in dance classes when they were very young. For Janaki, it had come as the most natural thing to do, with a mother playing veena and a sister doing Kathakali at home. “Raji chechi (the sister) was the one who was really into dance, she’s been the first to get the Sarvakalaprathibha, and three times in a row,” says the proud younger sister. Janaki was more inclined to do the catering business that her mother had started, one of the first to do so in Thiruvananthapuram. She would come back from college and help her mother with the cooking, billing and ordering.
But then tragedy struck with the passing of their mother. Somehow, it brought a twist in the lives of the daughters. Janaki went into dance more seriously, while her sister became active in the catering business. From Subhadra teacher who taught her dance when she was five, Janaki went to Vimala teacher, to Mohana Thulasi teacher in Kochi, and to Mydhili teacher. She learnt Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam and Kuchipudi. But when she became a teacher herself, she chose to teach Mohiniyattam and Kuchipudi. “Bharatanatyam, I love to watch; but Mohiniyattam is what I am happy to do, it’s got more lasyam, and it matches my energy level.”
She never thought she would be a teacher even when she took dance seriously. When marriage took her to the US, she began getting requests from many to teach Indian classical dance. They saw her perform for programmes of the Malayali associations. “I refused the first couple of years, but then I thought, why not.”
It came as a surprise to her brother Vijay Shankar who always thought she would be a corporate woman. “That’s the brother who got married to K.S. Chitra,” she says. Janaki was only in sixth grade when Chitra came into their family. “Back then I had no idea she was such a great singer. To me she will always be chettathiyamma first and K.S. Chitra after that.”
They can’t come for Janaki’s show in Thiruvananthapuram on July 24, they are away this month. “But I had to hold it this month because now is the time my students have their summer vacation.” She brought with her the more experienced students, three of them are in school and one is in college. They are a nervous lot, performing in India, the land of their parents.
“India is where the dance we learn came from, so we are nervous,” says Elizabeth, who has been with Janaki for nine years. “I told my students it won’t be the same as performing in America, here we would face a more critical crowd.”
Life in America has been hectic for Janaki. “There is no support system, you only have your friends to turn to.” She does all the household tasks herself, runs the dance school and manages her family of four — husband Balu, daughter Meenakshi, a seventh grader who learns dance with her other students, and seven-year old Shiva.
