Traditional Alarmel Valli explains the ancient art and contemporary dance Bharatanatyam. by TANUJA SURPURIYA "Grace, Tanuja. You'll never catch Krishna's heart with droopy arms." That was the scolding I heard every Saturday morning from age six to about nine from my Bharatanatyam teacher Prema Sriram, or Prema Aunty as my sister, my friends, and I call her. A professional dancer, singer, and close family friend, Prema Aunty was Memphis' first teacher of the classical Indian dance. So there we'd be, tham-thee-tham thay-tha-thay, our feet pounded out the rhythms to the religious poems on the hardwood floor of the Neshoba Center in Germantown while our chubby little fingers fanned out to resemble lotus flowers being offered to Krishna. Alarmel Valli began learning the dance at age 7 in India under the tutelage of renowned dance gurus Shri Chokkalingam and his son Shri Subbaraya Pillai. Now in her 40s, Madras-born Valli is one of the greatest Bharatanatyam dancers in the world. But be wary of praising her for keeping an ancient tradition alive. Valli insists that Bharatanatyam is a contemporary dance, despite its 3,000-year-old history. "It is not an exotic museum piece," she says in a phone interview from Minnesota. "Sure, it's exotic because it's foreign [to American audiences], and it is ancient. But it is a dynamic, vital, living tradition that has very much to do with our times. There's a tendency to mystify it even by Indians, but actually we who perform are contemporary women. Bharatanatyam provides us with the alphabet and grammar, but the dancer writes the poem through her dance. "I don't live in a cultural ivory tower. When I dance, I am drawing on all that I am, all I have experienced." Mostly performing in opera houses across Europe, Valli is in the midst of a U.S. tour that brings her to the AgriCenter International Sunday. She has danced for kings and queens from the Netherlands to Nicaragua, including performances at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the Theater De La Ville Festival in Paris, the Cervantino Festival in Mexico, the Vienna International Dance Festival, the New York International Festival of the Arts, and last year's Venice Biennale Solo Donna Festival. "I find I can communicate across all linguistic barriers through Bharatanatyam," says Valli, who performed at Rhodes College about a decade ago. "In our times, especially now with so much violence and tension and fragmentation, this dance brings people together. It uplifts. It makes you feel all is well with the world after all." As with any tradition so old, there are many myths on the origin of the dance. Most popular is that after being asked to create a spiritual text simple enough for the common man to understand, Brahma, the god of creation, took the words, gestures, music, and emotions from the first four spiritual texts and created the Natyaveda. He then instructed the legendary sage Bharata in this art of dance so that it might be taught to all mankind. The three syllables in the sage's name illustrate the three most essential components of dance: Bhava (expressions), Raga (melody), and Tala (rhythm), and the tradition blends abstract dance (Nritta) and graceful expression (Nritya). With its strong roots in Hinduism, Bharatanatyam has been nurtured in the temples of southern India for centuries, often telling the legends of Hindu gods and kings, whether it's the story of Diwali, the major Hindu holiday celebrating Lord Rama's return from a 14-year exile with lighting of tiny lamps, or Krishna's exploits from stealing butter as a baby to his victories as a warrior. The dance simply cannot be done well without reverence for history. The dancer must understand the meaning of the scriptures if she is to convey the story properly through her actions and expressions, Valli says. Bharatanatyam is almost balletic, but instead of leaps and pirouettes, the dancer's endurance is tested through the speed of her feet, the tension in her arms, the sharp expressions of her face, her statuesque poses, and the consistent grace she shows throughout. Young dancers start out learning the meaning of scores of hand gestures and techniques like moving their heads and necks side to side without moving the shoulders. The ability to hold the Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, pose -- balanced on the right leg with the left leg stretched across the body and the hands crossed in front -- for as long as possible is another glory mastered young. But true experience manifests when dancers like Valli communicate the spiritual connection they feel with God with the audience. "The experience can be anything you want," she says. "It is intellectual, emotional, purely physical, and ultimately spiritual." You can e-mail Tanuja Surpuriya at tanuja@memphisflyer.com.