Silvana Duarte
Silvana Duarte stood at the entrance of the Nrityagram dance village in Bangalore, India, with nothing but a suitcase in hand. Just months before, she sent a letter halfway around the world to this prestigious Odissi school, but never received a response back. Although knowing that this traditional gurukula did not accept foreigners, she daringly departed from her home in Brazil, leaving her family and ballet career behind, to truly test her fate. She had never practiced Odissi before, but Silvana knew in her heart that she was destined to seek enlightenment in this art.
She knocked on the door and within seconds, Nrityagram’s founder, Protima Bedi, appeared on the other side. “Yes, we received your letter,” she said after a brief greeting. “You are very welcome to join this community, but under this one condition: we will teach Odissi to you, if you also teach yoga and classical ballet techniques to us.”
And so, Silvana’s journey as a both a teacher of what she knew, and a student of what she was yet to master began at age 30, nearly three decades after her initial steps in dance.
In her home nation of Brazil, dance had always been the key force in Silvana’s life. She worked for years to become a successful modern and classical ballerina, while also experimenting with jazz and contemporary forms. As most young adults her age headed off to college and university, she decided to skip the traditional career options and lend herself entirely to the art of movement. Around that same era, she also began to deepen her practice in yoga and meditation, something that her parents, both yogis themselves, had inspired her to do. But, as her two streams of passion grew increasingly prevalent, Silvana failed to find a way in which both her dance and her yoga could co-exist harmoniously.
“On one side, I had yoga and on another side, I had classical ballet,” she says. “When I was in yoga, I missed the movement, I missed the dance. And when I was in ballet, I missed the yoga, the inner life…I had this question in my heart- when are these two ways going to meet?”
While enveloped in this inner conflict, Silvana began following a prominent spiritual monk whose teachings had garnered an international following. His name was Sathya Sai Baba, and Silvana hoped that he could offer the sliver of enlightenment that she seeked. This curiosity prompted her first trip to Prasanthi Nilayam, Sathya Sai Baba’s main ashram in Puttaparthi, India.
Sitting amidst a gathering of devotees in Sathya Sai Baba’s presence, Silvana felt an immense rush of purpose, which was heightened when he introduced a group of young Kuchipudi practitioners. At the time, Silvana knew nothing of this term, but as the boys and girls ascended the stage and began to dance, a lightbulb instantaneously flared up in her mind, “I could find, through that dance, the value that you gain from yoga. I just suddenly noticed that in yoga and in dance, there is no difference.”
When she returned home, she began absorbing as much information about Indian Classical Dance as she could possibly find. At the time, the Indian Classical Dance community in Brazil was virtually non-existent. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, was wildly popular and his hit music video for “Black or White” was blowing up across the country. As fate would have it, Silvana stumbled upon the video and caught a glimpse of a short, yet enticing clip that featured an Odissi dancer in full costume. She felt her stars shift into alignment and set out to find a teacher for this new endeavour.
This brought her to the front steps of Nrityagram, standing face to face with Protima Bedi, who would soon become Silvana’s first Odissi guru. “To begin Odissi dance in this kind of place was a blessing,” Silvana says. “When you start studying in a gurukula, you have to work very hard. You practice not only your body- the basic steps, choreography, abhinaya, abstract movement- but you also practice the mind. You must understand a little bit of Sanskrit, a little bit of the literature, music, mythology…You have all day, a full day, to dedicate yourself to the dance.”
In 1998, as Silvana was in the peak of her learning, Protima Bedi suddenly passed away during a pilgrimage through the Himalayas. Everything at Nrityagram came to a pause. The heart that had pumped life into its walls for nearly a decade ceased to beat, and all activity at the school came to an abrupt halt.
With profound sadness, Silvana travelled back to Brazil to spend time with her family. Though, with a blessing from Protima, Silvana promptly continued her guru’s legacy and opened her own Odissi school called Padmaa in Sao Paolo- one of the first in Brazil. She was ready to open her community to the beauty of Odissi, but she still felt as though she had much to learn herself. This brought her back to India- this time, to Delhi, to work under the guidance of Sharon Lowen, an American-born dancer that had been practicing classical dances in India for decades.
“At that time, Sharon had never taught Odissi before. She told me, ‘I’m not a teacher, I’m just an artist. I’m not interested in teaching anyone,’” Silvana says. “But I insisted, so much so, that she finally accepted me. So, for many years, I was the first disciple of hers, and now, she’s dedicated her life entirely to teaching.”
Silvana flourished under Sharon’s teachings, and more than a teacher, Sharon became a friend. Following her guidance, Silvana performed, what she considers to be her debut solo performance. Although she never had a formal arangetram, this solo in Delhi was, as she remembers, one of her most profound solo performances during her dance career.
Jumping between India and Brazil for a full year in 2004, she prepared herself for the main stage at the Indian Habitat Centre, which she would share with her guru Sharon and a live orchestra of musicians. Set against the backdrop of a custom set designed by Naresh Kapuria, a renowned urban artist in Delhi, Silvana danced for over an hour in a shared euphoria with her audience. Along with Mr. Kapuria, prominent guests, such as dancer Madhavi Mudgal, the cultural minister of India, and the Brazilian ambassador attended her show.
“There were so many friends and artists around me, it was such a blessing,” she says.”The highlight of the performance is this insight that you have…It’s a kind of frequency that you establish with the audience. You just feel like you’re transporting to another place, it’s very special. You have no disturbances in your mind, you have no worries about what is coming next, you just live your dance. You are total- full of dance, with your dance.”
Silvana strived to bring this same sense of fulfillment to her students in Brazil. Many people, even those involved in yoga or other components of Indian culture, Silvana says, didn’t know much about Indian Classical Dance during this time. She began her process of education by chatting with friends, colleagues and popular yoga teachers about the art form, and eventually started giving short demonstrations of Odissi in venues across the country- in universities, cultural spaces, yoga centres, and dance schools.
“I gave hundreds of demonstrations of Odissi,” she says. “But the first transformation starts in yourself…The things you bring forward in your performance take a lot of time to digest for yourself, to mean something for you. So what you express for the people, that must be very true for yourself. It’s not just entertainment, it’s a way of life. And through these demonstrations, I eventually found the correct way to make people understand.”
Luckily, she says, Brazilian culture is infused with a similar religious energy to that of India. Many cultural arts, folk dances and mythologies can be tied back to a spiritual origin, which, in a sense, allowed for a more receptive audience. Over time, with the added influences of globalization and pop culture, of course, classical Indian arts gained an immense amount of appreciation in Brazil. In 2011, the nation established the Indian Cultural Centre in Sao Paolo, where Silvana has been a senior Odissi teacher since its inception.
Silvana has opened her own classes at Padmaa to students of all types- not just those who wish to pursue the art professionally. For her, it holds a deeper purpose beyond the gains of a career; a chance to turn inward and discover one’s own soul. With a certificate in motor coordination, she’s able to teach the correct ways in which the body should move to prevent injuries or pain. On an introspective note, she utilizes her background in yoga and meditation to bring her students to a place of deeper understanding, a technique that was conceived while teaching yoga at Nrityagram years earlier.
“[Yoga] impacts my dance very much. And more than asanas, the pranayamas and meditation make a big difference in dance,” she says. “Because dance is a kind of channel for healing, and also for knowing yourself. So when you understand that, through meditation and through yoga, you can understand how your mind works, how to be better, and how to transform yourself through the art.”
The sheer purpose of dance, she says, is preserve the beauty of life. “When you speak about dance, you’re not only speaking about movement,” she concludes. “You are speaking about yourself.”
As she’s wavered through the seasons of life, this common theme of self-transformation has lent itself time and time again to Silvana’s journey, allowing her to travel deep within. Allowing herself to be pulled by intuition- entirely surrendering to the risks of exploration and the challenges of growth- is exactly what brought Silvana to the front steps of Nrityagram when she was 30 years old. Now, letting that same light guide her through decades of learning, she stands on the front steps of her own school, and more importantly, her own legacy.
