Subashini Ganesan calls out steps as students Aashna Maclennan and Nayantara Arora display feats of coordination impressive for children their age. When the girls’ arms begin to droop or shoulders begin to hunch, Ganesan, the teacher at southeast Portland’s Natya Leela Academy, is quick to correct.

"I have to stop you," she says, holding her arms to imitate a student’s sleepy posture. "This looks like a bird. And that’s lovely, but for this dance we need to make sure our arms are lifted and straight. Come!"

She commands in a tone that blends her compassion and desire for perfection, punctuating all of her corrections with an invitation to join her. The girls resume the classical South Indian bharathanatyam dance with heightened awareness. They complete the series of moves and Ganesan compliments their focus.

"People expect to come in, and leave ‘knowing it,’" Ganesan laughs. "I have to remind people, ‘this is not a training montage. Would you please relax?’"

Ganesan understands how liberating it can be to let go of the tightness people often associate with classical dance. When she began teaching bharathanatyam, she faced a similar internal conflict.

A lifelong learner of bharathanatyam dancing, Ganesan was preoccupied with strictly preserving the integrity of the classical dance form. She’s since become more flexible, realizing the importance of making bharathanatyam accessible to a multicultural audience.

"I want to present it in a way that makes sense," she explains. "I don’t want people to get lost in the experience and just focus on the costumes or the jewelry."

Kids seem to intuitively understand the message of focus and experience. Ganesan describes a class she taught at a public school where the students were instructed to write a story and then translate it into bharathanatyam mudras, or hand gestures. Ganesan stresses the importance of dance as a tool that allows cross-platform learning to occur naturally.

"At first they were very embarrassed. They worried about their spelling," she remembers. As the movements aligned with their stories, the students were freed from self-consciousness and able to focus on the creativity involved in communicating a story.

During a recent performance at the Portland Children’s Museum, Ganesan presented a poem using hand gestures. With her arms lifted to a height visible to the crowd, she guided children and adults alike on proper mudra form. As the audience began slowly dancing — moving their hands around their bodies and faces — a transformation took place. The words of the poem changed from a foreign incantation to a personal experience.

While not everyone in attendance quite understood what was going on (when asked if there were questions, one eager audience member shouted, "I went to Disneyland!"), everyone was captivated by the work of the Natya Leela Academy dancers. Ganesan’s commitment to both the preservation and spread of bharathanatyam dance is apparent in the remarkable skill of her students and her sincere desire to spread her passion for the dance.

The Natya Leela Academy bharathanatyam dance performance was part of the Portland Children’s Museum’s World Sounds performance series. For information about upcoming events, call (503) 223-6500 or visit <www.portlandcm.org>. To learn more about the academy, visit <www.natyaleela.com>.