Photos: Navin reddy
Plymouth’s Samhita Jasthi shares her journey as a Kuchipudi dancer since age 5.
On July 26, a group of nearly 300 people will gather in the darkened auditorium at Wayzata Central Middle School to watch a young Indian classical dancer ascend the stage. Seventeen-year-old Wayzata High School student Samhita Jasthi has been practicing the Indian classical dance form of Kuchipudi since she was 5, and her solo Rangapravesam performance this summer will serve as her official graduation from student to performer.
Kuchipudi traces its lineage back for centuries, originating from the Krishna district in Southern India. “The performance in general includes a lot of expressive gestures. It has a lot of rhythmic movements, and there’s a lot of storytelling through the dance too,” Samhita says. “Kuchipudi also, I would say, is a lot more fast-paced compared to other forms of art from our culture,” she says, noting that the dance form employs unique movements, specific hand gestures and rigorously practiced facial expressions.
For this final performance as a student, Samhita spent the past year honing seven songs for her Rangapravesam solo performance. “Out of those seven songs, about three or four of them would be ones that I’ve done growing up already,” she says. “The other ones are either choreographed by my guru or choreographed by other gurus [who] my guru learned from.”
In the leadup to her Rangapravesam, Samhita has been ramping up the duration and intensity of her practice schedule with her guru, Swapna Chodavarapu. “Normally, growing up, I’ve had classes about two hours every Saturday,” Samhita says. Lately, she’s been practicing at Chodavarapu’s home studio for upward of three hours a day.
Samhita and Chodavarapu spend their sessions running through the soloist’s three hours of choreography with the guru pausing for corrections. “Then the next day, I try to improve on that more and more,” Samhita says, estimating that it takes about two to three weeks to fully learn a new song. “And then you just have to keep practicing and practicing and getting all those steps right.Then you also have to think about the beat and make sure that your feet are moving at the same beat that the song is going at.”
Samhita says that Kuchipudi has been a way to connect with her Indian heritage over her dedicated years of practice. On July 26, as the lights dim and a live orchestra prepares its instruments, Samhita predicts she’ll feel confident. “This last year, all my focus has been on this dance,” she says. “I’ll feel very excited to complete a really big step in my life.”
