January Low

January: the first month of the year. A new beginning. A fresh start. It’s a word that carries deep symbolism, a word that offers a glimmer of hope, and, for one dancer, a word that cradles an identity. 

As a mother, a wife and a dancer, January has endured the altering waves of womanhood, dipping into her darkest moments and emerging with unwavering wisdom. Dance, for January, is a force as merciless as the earth’s changing seasons, but, as is always so in the natural world, it has brought her full circle, replenishing her path and making room for new growth. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s taught her a very valuable life lesson: know who you are, both within dance, and without.

“The biggest challenge for me has been trying to find who I am,” January says. “I personally think that sometimes in Indian Classical Dance, there’s so much going on externally- the costumes, the makeup, the hand gestures, the stories and the philosophies- that somehow the dancer kind of gets lost. The dancer’s identity in that moment is everything that she’s gone through to be at that point on stage…and it’s rare to know about the person behind dance.”

January’s story begins in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where she danced ballet as a young girl. Her parents, who are avid art appreciators, ensured her life was never absent of creative expression, often bringing her to attend dance recitals, broadway shows, art exhibits, and anything else that would evoke her inner artiste. It was thanks to her father, in fact, that she was introduced to Indian Classical Dance at just eight years old. In a chance encounter, he attended a dance performance with his business company, and it just so happened to be orchestrated by the renowned Ramli Ibrahim, a household name famous for cultivating the craft of Indian Classical Dance in Malaysia.  

After the show, her father rushed home in utter amazement. “Jan, I think you would really like this Indian dance,” he said to her. Misunderstanding the term, “Indian dance” as the upbeat, pop style of Bollywood, January dismissed the idea. “No, no, it’s not Bollywood,” her father said. “Why don’t you come see it and then you can decide for yourself?” So, with her father, January pulled up a chair at Ramli’s self-founded Sutra Dance Theatre during a troupe rehearsal, and within a week, she was enrolled in her first class. 

“I was terrified of Ramli,” January says with a giggle. “But I think it was this fine line between being terrified of him and respecting him… I never wanted to disappoint him, and I really think a big part of the reason that I’m still dancing today is because I didn’t want to let him down.”

As he does with most of his students, Ramli started January in Bharatanatyam classes, although as time passed, she felt a strong pull towards the repertoires of Odissi. Enchanted by the makeup, the jewelry, the music and the movements, she began learning this classical form as well, and eventually, it began to wholly encapsulate her practice. “I’ve actually come to believe that Odissi may be present in my blood,” reads an entry on January’s blog. “The music itself gets my feet tapping and for the entire duration of the song, I am entranced. No one can catch my attention while I am lost in the world of its music.”

January quickly developed a deep bond with her guru, and an even deeper bond with her practice. At age 15, she was granted the rare opportunity to perform an Odissi duet with Ramli himself, which they brought on tour through the motherland of Orissa- January’s first time touching down on Indian soil. That same year, as her dance was flourishing, January’s parents moved to Thailand. She, of course, preferred to stay put, and so began spending nearly every spare moment at the Sutra Foundation, dancing, teaching and even helping with the office administration. Dance became not only a creative outlet, but a 24/7 lifestyle as she grew increasingly ingrained the school, building her own refuge within its walls- for her, it was home. 

Noticing her evident devotion, Ramli made a suggestion to January when she turned 18, one which he reserved for very few. Just as she finished a performance for the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, he took her aside and told her she was ready for her bharatanatyam arangetram. “I did a double take!” January says with a laugh. “Sutra has been around for some 30-odd years and in that time he has only presented nine or ten students to perform their arangetram. So it was very special.” 

The process was quick- only one month to prepare amidst the juggling of other classes and performances. She worried about her stamina and the strength it would take to dance through this two-hour performance, not just once, but three nights in a row, as Ramli turned her debut into a full-scale production. The performance was traditional in that it was open-air, beneath the sky in the courtyard of the Sutra school.

The rush of the performance was a high on its own, but the most incredible moment, she says, came as the clouds rolled in overhead. “Since it was open-air, we had this risk of it raining. You can’t really control the weather,” she says. “It wasn’t like heavy torrential downpour, it was just light, but the audience stayed put there in the rain and continued watching. They didn’t get up and leave. The rain didn’t even affect them… I appreciated that so much.” 

As her third and final performance came to an end, so did the chapter of Bharatanatyam in her dance career. “Funnily enough, after my Arangetram, I went Odissi all the way,” she says. Continuing her practice in odissi, the cycle of teaching classes, performing on tours and working in the Sutra office, quickened its pace until January felt that she needed a new challenge. In a bold move, she handed in her resignation at the company that had birthed her career to take a six-month dance residency in Seoul, South Korea. 

Living and learning in the vibrant city of Seoul was a thrilling experience, and although she gained a fresh dose of knowledge, when she returned home to Kuala Lumpur, she felt she had lost her inner compass. Not knowing what to do or where to go, she utilized her university degree in communications to take a job in public relations. Three months in, however, she realized she wasn’t quite cut out for the 9-5 office life, and quit with the hopes of finding a better footing. But, as it does, life happened, and it greeted her with a very special gift- a man who stole her heart. Within the year, they were married, and shortly after, she got news of her first pregnancy. Although January was beyond happy to start a family with a pair of twins in her belly, she could feel the remnants of a lost soul still wandering through life and yearning for a place to dance. It was then, during a lull in her dance career, that she felt even deeper, a void in her identity. 

“When I was younger and performing, dance was my world. My entire identity was this dancer. I didn’t have any time to think or analyze who I was as a person and who I wanted to be,” she says. “So when dance was taken away from me, when I stopped, it was very, very difficult for me because I really didn’t know who I was.”

Steeping an inner existential crisis, she held the pause button for about two years, in which time, she had packed her whole family up, moved between countries, settled as a stay-at-home mom and became pregnant with her third child. She tried to perform contemporary pieces here and there, but couldn’t find the strength to rekindle her odissi practice, despite the flame of passion still flickering within. Her hopes, it seems, eventually manifested into reality, and when her friend, Rathimalar Govindarajoo, suggested they perform an odissi duet, she couldn’t say no. 

January would take the stage in a three-day production about womanhood titled, bloom- her first time dancing Odissi since leaving the Sutra Foundation, and her first time performing pregnant. 

“I watch a video of it now and I still can’t believe I did it,” she says. “I think it sent a really strong message to women, to dancers because, at least  in Asia, when you get married and have kids, the dancer usually stops. And maybe when the child has grown up, then maybe they start dancing again, but usually they don’t really perform, they start teaching. So I danced for myself, but I also danced for all of the moms who wished that they could continue dancing and who still want to dance, and the mothers who dream through their daughters.”

Bloom sold out entirely, and January was overwhelmed with the positive response, but one person in particular had his doubts. “Ramli was very worried, I think he’s always worried when his dancers get married, have children, because it’s so difficult to balance a family and keep that commitment to your dance,” she says. “He said, ‘Why can’t you just have the baby and dance after that? Why do you need to make a big spectacle of it?’ But I told him… I’m not going to use a pregnancy as an excuse to stop, I’m going to move forward. And it wasn’t so much that I was pregnant, it was, I so happen to be pregnant.”

To January’s delight, Ramli raved about the show after he attended. Bloom, as the name suggests, served as a metaphor, a fresh start for her odissi career. She began dancing more frequently and has since choreographed and produced her own shows, such as Dedicated last December. Now, the same child that she carried through bloom is almost two years old and January hopes her decision to dance provides an influential message, first and foremost, to her children. 

“I think it’s an important lesson for my children to see me pursuing what I want to do. I don’t want to grow up one day and blame them for all of my missed opportunities,” she says. “Everyone is the driver of their own destiny and everyone is responsible for their own lives. So first and foremost, you need to decide what you want your life to be.”

Balancing life as a dancer, a mother and a wife is something that took January many years to achieve. It’s difficult, she notes, as your relationship with dance often becomes a frustrating sea of on again, off again encounters that become harder to swim through each time. 

“Usually when you talk to artists, things like getting married, having children is so mundane that it’s not artistic anymore,” she says. “You can be happy, you can be a stay-at-home mom and go for your dance practice too- it’s possible and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.”