Dance to divinity

Dividing her time between New York and Bombay, between teaching, researching and performing, contemporary dancer Uttara Asha Coorlawala’s dedication was rewarded with yet another distinction — the Dadabhai Naoroji International Award for Excellence and Lifetime Achievement. The Award conferred on her on May 25, 2001 in Bombay honors her "for creating a contemporary dance vocabulary for India and for having wrought a profound and permanent change in the Indian dance environment,” notes a press release. Instituted by the Dadabhai Naoroji Parliamentary Centenary Committee, the award recognizes service to the nation and society.

Her seminal work is archived in the Dance Research Collection of the New York Public Library, Lincoln Centre, New York and finds a place in the International Encyclopedia of Dance published by the Oxford Universi­ty Press. Sections of her doctoral thesis and other writings are required reading for courses at Barnard, Columbia, UCLA (University of California at Los An­geles), Temple University and other dance programs, according to the press release. She is a professor at Long Island University and also teaches at Barnard College and Princeton.

Her lifelong aim has been to create a fusion between eastern and western forms of dance. She under­took intensive courses in yoga and Bharat Natyam, graduated from Smith College, trained under the legend­ary dance diva Martha Graham in New York, and performed with the Pearl Lang Dance Company and America’s other great dance companies including Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham.

In 1970 her performance of Yakshi (inspired by the stone sculptures she had seen at Sanchi as a teenager) that fused Indian sensibilities with western dance techniques propelled her into the post modern movement. To ensure a continuous interaction between cultures she formed the Mandala Dance Theatre Company comprising eight young New York based dancers. "In 1974 they embarked on a nine-city tour in India and despite initial bewilder­ment, the tour changed perceptions about modern dance, giving the rich tradition of Indian dance a new direc­tion and adding a new chapter to dance history,” men­tions a write-up by Gopika Vaidya. "A year later Coorla­wala’s dance changed dramatically through a chance meeting with Swami Muk­tananda Param­hansa (who) chris­tened her ‘Uttara’ after a princess in the Mahabharata who was taught dance by Prince Arjuna in his 13th avatar. Asha became Uttara Asha and with this emerged a new quest for truth through dance,” adds Vaidya.

Over the years she has embarked on 20 internation­al dance tours sponsored by cultural and government agencies. She is the past recipient of the JDRIII Rockefeller Fellowship in USA and the Homi Bhabha Fellowship in India. With dance remaining an essential and central part of her being she is credited with having helped to reconceptualize the place and role of India in the global history of dance. Coorlawala lives up to the words of her guru Martha Graham that dance should "energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety and the wonder of life.”