Thousands gather to celebrate Tamil heritage

Gobinaa Manoharan

Photos supplied

Mississauga dancers will be well represented at the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) convention, slated for July 5-7 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.

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Mississauga News

ByJoseph Chin-Jun 20, 2013 

MISSISSAUGA — Mississauga dancers will be well represented at the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) convention, slated for July 5-7 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.

It’s the first time the annual gathering of thousands of North American Tamils will take place outside of the U.S. Toronto is home to more than 100,000 Tamils, one of the largest Tamil diasporas outside of South Asia.

Hosted by the Canadian Tamil Congress, the event will celebrate Tamil language, culture and heritage.

Among the 19 dancers hailing from Mississauga are Srinithi Raghavan, Gobinaa Manoharan and Vaishali Kannan, all longtime students at the Sri Sanskriti Dance Academy. They will be joined by students from the Shilompoli Shethra Dance Academy, Sai Bharatha Shethiram and Balavimala Narthanalayam.

It will be an evening of a lifetime for the dancers, who will perform a pair of dances, one of which is Sivagamiyin Sabatham (The Vow of Sivagami), a dance loosely based on a Tamil historical novel written by Kalki Krishnamurthy in 1944. Honour, love and friendship are important themes in the novel, set in 7th-century South India.

More than 100 classical dancers from across the GTA will perform the dance under the watchful eye of famed Indian dance instructor and choreographer Madurai R. Muralidharan.

“I’m very excited to get this opportunity to dance before such a large audience,” said Manoharan, who has been dancing since she was 5 years old.

Now 22, she loves Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance which has spread in popularity in Canada with many renowned dance instructors such as Mississauga’s Lata Pada.

“It’s a dance form that uses a lot of hand gestures, movement and facial expressions to tell a story,” said Manoharan.

Like Manoharan, Raghavan, 24, has been dancing for nearly 15 years. She’s currently one of the senior dancers at Sri Sanskriti, a large academy in Mississauga.

“Though I was brought up in Canada and did all my schooling here, Bharatanatyam is one of the ways I can connect to my rich traditions. There’s an emotional aspect to Bharathanatyam. More than the rhythmic steps and geometric movements, there’s an acting element which brings life to historical stories and mythology,” she said.

Raghavan is thrilled to be working with Muralidharan and associate choreographer Uma Murali.

“Classes with them have been an amazing experience. Their passion for dance is contagious, and we feel blessed to be a part of something like this so far from the place our parents call home,” she said.

Nineteen-year-old Kannan has been dancing for 12 years. She says auditioning for Muralidharan was special.

“I didn’t really know much about him before he came to our school, but my parents and grandparents — they all know who he is,” she said.

Having performed at desiFEST and before large Canada Day crowds, Kannan isn’t too nervous. She admits, however, the audience, being Tamil and knowledgeable about Bharatanatyam, might be tough to impress. But with a dozen years of training under her belt she’s up to the challenge.

FeTNA 2013 will draw stars from the second-largest film industry in South Asia after Bollywood and provide an opportunity for Fortune 500 companies from Tamil Nadu, India to explore trade and investment opportunities in Ontario.

For more information, visit fetna2013.com/.

jchin@mississauga.net