Kumari Mayshark
“In the Bhagavad Gita, there’s the concept of yukta-vairāgya, which means, do what you do or do what you enjoy, but do it in Krishna’s service,” says Kumari Mayshark. “I think that’s a really beautiful concept because a lot of people think of spirituality or religion being this really rigid or really austere practice where you have to give up all of your attachments…But this process that Krishna talks about allows you to continue doing the things that you love. It’s just a question of changing the mindset. So, I’m not just doing this dance practice for my own enjoyment, it’s for a greater good.”
In the calm way that she speaks and the wise words that she shares, it’s clear that Kumari is living for a greater purpose. For her, dance is more than mere steps on a stage, it’s a service to the masses and an offering to God.
Formerly based in New York City, I catch Kumari on a phone call just as she’s preparing for a full year of travel with her husband. At age 28, she’s surrendering her permanence in the city as a dancer, yogi and teacher, and letting the universe whisk her away on a journey across the globe. “It’s personal travel, but everything personal that I do ends up being dance-related,” she says with a laugh. “We’re travelling to a lot of temples and every time I announce which temple we’re going to, I usually have a person reach out to me and ask if I can perform there. So I will be performing, but it’s not something that’s pre-meditated or geared towards ‘touring.’ It will be more spontaneous and casual.”
Although Kumari doesn’t like to call herself a professional dancer, she’s been practicing bharatanatyam since she was a young girl. Her spiritual devotion through the arts is embellished in her roots, reaching back to the paths of her parents, who are lovers of creativity and who raised Kumari and her siblings as Hindus. When they were teenagers, her parents discovered the spiritual movement called Krishna Consciousness and, bringing a deeper meaning to their lives, they decided to give back to the community by building a Krishna temple in Leicester, England, where Kumari was born.
As a child, Kumari remembers going to prayer every day, listening to the carnatic chants in temple and being immersed in a world entirely devoted to God. “While kids were watching Nickelodeon, I was hearing stories from the Mahabharata,” reads a caption on her Instagram account.
Naturally, this lifestyle exposed Kumari and her family to many classical Indian art forms. Her mother practiced carnatic music and her older sister, Anapayini, took an immediate liking to bharatanatyam. Anapayini, who is now a professional bharatanatyam dancer and teacher, began practicing at school, but as her passion grew more serious, the family decided, in full support, to pack their bags, fly to India and find her a proper guru.
They met with many teachers, but it wasn’t until they came across Indira Kadambi that they truly saw a guiding light. “If there was one thing that set her apart from the other teachers, I think that was her actual commitment to teaching dance and sharing the art …The business arrangement, the money, those things- although they are important- it didn’t take the forefront of our interactions or our relationship with her…it was very focused on the art, which my sister and my family really appreciated. And she’s still like that to this day.”
At the time of the trip, Kumari was only three years old and wouldn’t start dancing herself until the family relocated to Michigan, USA one year later. Enchanted by her older sister’s abilities filled her with a desire to follow in Anapayini’s footsteps. She began learning under her sister through private lessons at home and by joining her classes with other young children throughout the week. When she was 15, Kumari decided to dive deeper into her practice, and travelled to India by herself to begin studying under her sister’s guru, Indira.
“My experience is that [Indira] brings out the best in every dancer. She looks at what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, she encourages you to work on your weaknesses, and she also really pushes you to improve your strengths instead of just giving cookie cutter choreography to her students and expecting them all to dance. She really can see what works with each dancer.”
Building technique and confidence with Indira, Kumari decided it was time to perform her Arangetram when she was 20 years old. Now an adult, however, she didn’t have the luxury of receiving full financial support from her parents, nor did she have enough money on her own to execute a glamorous debut. Between a venue in Chennai, stage decor, lighting, audio, the musicians, a videographer, a new costume and jewelry, Kumari was looking at a $7,000 budget. So, as is more common in today’s day and age, she attempted to fundraise the money from her greatest supporters.
“This was before everyone was doing GoFundMes and Kickstarters. I made a website for myself and I reached out to everyone I knew, my extended family, and I just told them how much this meant to me,” she says. “Amazingly, I raised the money, which really showed me the amount of support that my friends and family had for me in pursuing this art form.”
After six months of intense training for six hours per day, Kumari took the stage at SPACES in Chennai for her nearly three-hour-long performance. Her guru Indira was prominent for her abinaya pieces, so following a sloka, alarippu, jahtiswaram, shabdam and varnam, Kumari presented four abinaya pieces- namely, two padmas, a javali and a devaranama- before her final tillana. These abinaya pieces were especially important to land, as Indira’s own guru and renowned artist, Kalanidhi Narayanan, was the sitting guest of honour.
“She was sitting in the chairs near the back and she couldn’t see very well- at this point she was already in her mid-late eighties- and so, the next day after my arangetram, I got to go to her house and perform my little abinaya pieces just for her and my teacher in her house,” Kumari says. “That was one very memorable experience…I feel lucky to have spent that time with her because she passed away [in 2016].”
The full experience of her arangetram, Kumari says, was exhilarating. “ I remember thinking afterwards, ‘God I want to do that again,’” she says reminiscently. For Kumari, it was a glimpse of the years to come- the divine experience of building a bridge between her viewers and a higher being. However, with great benefits came a great burden, which was evident years later when she returned to Chennai to perform a solo margam.
“Performing [in Chennai] for and in front of other Chennai artists, notable dancers and teachers, is very rewarding, but it’s always very stressful,” she says. “[The struggle] is striking that balance between trying to be this ideal of what I think the Chennai dance scene expects from me, but at the same time not changing who I am just to meet that expectation.”
At times, this has been a struggle that has persisted through Kumari’s self-perception- feelings of not improving, not being good enough or not performing to the best of her ability.
“I think that I struggle with this idea of being a dancer, what that means and what people expect. I am a quote-on-quote dancer, and so me not meeting those expectations, is discouraging and makes me think, ‘I don’t know if I should even continue doing this because I’m never going to be good enough,’” she says. “I have to remind myself that I do this for myself. It doesn’t matter if other people are watching, it doesn’t matter if other people are pleased with what I’m doing or if they’re judging me. None of that matters. The important thing is when I dance, I feel happy, and there’s such joy in that.”
This is something that many dancers likely struggle with, and the best way to beat it, Kumari says, is to just dance.
The by-products of dance may be Kumari’s greatest struggle, but it’s also her greatest cure. Dance has given her the opportunity to perform on stages around the world and aligned her path with some of the most influential people in her life. But, most importantly, it has grounded her and persisted as her greatest gift to the divine.
“[Dance] has continued to be my link to my spirituality. Even in times where I don’t feel like there’s much of a connection to my spiritual practice or my deeper self, I feel like dance has remained as that,” she says. “In the most intense moments, it can be out of body almost. I’ve had moments on stage where, even though I’m there and I remember the choreography and I’m performing it, I really do feel like an instrument. I feel like I’m there for a purpose and I’m instrumental in connecting the audience to a greater or more spiritual consciousness…And then other times, I’m just like, ‘My feet hurt.’”
To follow Kumari on her and her husband’s journey across the globe, check out their Instagram account @thesacredroam.