Desi News Corp - Index

Desi News Corp - Desi News - July 2009 - Index

GRANT’S COMMUNITY ACHIEVERS
GRANT’S IS PROUD TO PRESENT THIS
SERIES ABOUT PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING
A DIFFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY
THE TORCH BEARER
Lata Pada was in India with a dance troupe when
she heard the news. She had been conferred the
Order of Canada – and has the distinction of
being the only South Asian artiste to receive this award.
She was leaving for the UK and the US the day after
this interview to work on a collaborative project with
Theatre Direct, a group that works with school children
in Britain.
“This project takes our dance, Beneath the Banyan Tree
which has toured 90 schools since we first created it
four years ago, to the next level,” says Pada. “It’s about
the issues a girl from Bangalore, India, faces in Canada,
and the way she deals with them with the help of her
imaginary friends – creatures from the beloved Panchatantra
tales. It really impressed the director of another
company in England. She felt that the production mirrors
issues of assimilation, the generational tug-of-war,
of friendship and perhaps racism that exist in England
Lata Pada
DANCER,
CHOREOGRAPHER,
ORDER OF CANADA
today. She would like us
to set the work in the British
reality.”
Pada says receiving
the Order of Canada
makes her more conscious
of her responsibility
to pave the path
to see the arts as a part of society, so that more people
see it as a viable career. To create opportunities for the
new generation, to do advocacy for the arts, to create a
space for South Asian arts in Canada.
But Sampradaya, the dance company Pada founded,
has already been working in this area, she points out.
“Sampradaya plays a vital role in the larger dance
discourse.”
It has been Pada’s artistic mandate to demystify Indian
dance so that people get a sense of a vibrant art
form that is ancient but not stagnant, an art form that
is completely contemporary. One that is evolving, responding
to new realities, themes and issues.
“It’s not about another time, another place, but about
here and now,” she says. “I am committed to creating a
strong Indian aesthetic, but also, in the world of ex-