Chennai-based dancer couple Kokila Hariram and Goutham Sundararajan are co-founders of the Academy of Modern Danse (AMD, estb. 1998), the city’s first formal Western dance school which offers training and practice in classical ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, Latin ballroom and salsa, conducts examinations and awards certification in all genres. Kokila has a BFA (perfo-rming arts) degree from the renowned Pineapple Dance Studio in Covent Garden, London; teacher certification from the National University of Singapore, and is also certified as a Western dance teacher by the Common-wealth Society of Teachers of Dancing (CSTD), Australia. Her husband Goutham (son of the late veteran Tamil film actor Major Sundararajan) is a well-known choreographer, film and television actor. Promoted in 1998 with just four students, AMD, sited in the Russian Cultural Centre, Chennai, has 400 students aged 3.5-55 years and five teachers on its muster roll.
Newspeg. AMD celebrated its 15th anniversary in August last year with a scintillating display titled ‘Ensemble’, featuring 400 present and former students, and a few parents including Kokila’s dancer parents who flew down from Brunei (Southeast Asia) to participate in the performance.
Direct talk. “Our objective at AMD is to offer students professional training with a structured syllabus in all dance genres. We are the only school in Chennai offering certified, interna-tionally recognised Western dance classes and certification. Our aim is to prepare students for careers in dance,” says Kokila.
History. Born into a family of dancers — Kokila’s mother is a Bharatnatyam teacher and her father presents Kathakali and flamenco with equal panache — Kokila, who grew up in Brunei, started dancing from age three. When her parents sent her to London to study law, her aunt with whom she was staying and a ballerina in her own right, enrolled Kokila in the Pineapple Dance Studio which ended all plans to get a law degree. After completing the four-year BFA degree in performing arts, Kokila moved to Chennai with her parents, and taught aerobics at various locations in the city and signed up with the ballet school of the Russian Cultural Centre.
In the course of her work, she met her husband Goutham who was choreo-graphing shows for Jeffrey Vardon (founder of the Hot Shoe Dance Company, Chennai) and began working with them. The idea of starting their own dance school “flowered naturally”. “To qualify as a teacher, I signed up for teacher training at the National Univ-ersity of Singapore and won certifi-cation from CSTD,” recalls Kokila. After her training in Singapore, she returned to Chennai in 1996, married Goutham, and the duo started AMD in rented premises within the Russian Cultural Centre.
Future plans. “We want to encourage more dancers to qualify as teachers, and add more AMD centres in the city so that interested youngsters can contem-plate dance as a career. Since AMD is accredited by international examination boards and dance schools, we facilitate students from other dance schools to write their examinations at AMD. Eventually, we would like to start a degree course in dance,” says Goutham.
Spring in your step!
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)