Science and art coexist in St. Paul teacher's bharatanatyam dance classes

Before her students arrived at the bright and airy dance studio called Kala Vandanam in St. Paul's St. Anthony Park neighborhood, Suchitra Sairam reflected about her unusual journey from dancer to engineer to corporate executive to creative entrepreneur and educator.

Wearing shimmering earrings and jingling anklets sewn with bells, the 52-year-old Sairam spoke matter of factly, expressing intelligence and warmth at the same time. The studio's bright yellow walls accented with intricate wheel designs called chakras seemed to mirror her own aura of balance.

After earning a chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MBA at the University of Texas-Dallas and reaching executive leadership in the engineering industry, her career took an abrupt turn when she was about to turn 40. Sairam decided to shift her focus toward her dance pedagogy career.

In 2010, Sairam was a vice president at the Eagan-based Ergotron, where she was focused on new innovations, products and markets. When she learned the company was to be sold, she questioned her future.

"Where was this headed for me?" she remembered asking herself. "Where did I want to go? And what did I want to do next?"

She decided to leave her corporate career. "It was important for me to take a step back from that and say, OK, at this time, this is a good juncture for me to explore something else," she said. "I didn't know all that entailed, but I knew that it meant more time for art."

She went on to own a toy company for eight years in St. Paul, publish a children's book and perform nattuvangam (vocal percussion and hand cymbals) with Minneapolis' Ragamala Dance Company. She also devoted her energy toward her own dance practice in the form of bharatanatyam, a classical form from southern India.

Sairam had been studying the Kalakshetra style, known for its linear swift movements, since she was 15. Born in India, she moved to the United States when she was just over a year old. Her mother signed her up for a bharatanatyam class when she was 7, but Sairam hated it and didn't want to attend the classes.

"I just wanted to play soccer and do tap dance and that kind of stuff," she recalled.

Seven years later, she tried again, after learning that a couple of other girls were learning bharatanatyam. This time, she became serious about learning.

"I think because my mom didn't force me when I was really young is the reason why it's still with me now. It's been my own for a long time," she said.

She continued the practice after moving to Cambridge, Mass., for college.

During breaks, Sairam would return home to Texas for classes, and during the semester at MIT she'd practice on her own in the living room of her cooperative house where she lived with other students.

According to Sairam, her art made her business career better. "I can't imagine not having done both," she said. "It's in many ways disparate, but very complementary interests. They've fed off of each other, I think."

In her footsteps

Sairam founded her dance school, Kala Vandanam (which means salutation to the arts in Sanskrit), in 2002, first as a home studio and later at Dreamland Arts in St. Paul. Nine years ago, she moved to a studio in Lowertown, and opened her current space in St. Anthony Park in January 2020. Her students are of different ages, ranging from 7 to adults of any gender.

Traditionally, bharatanatyam is a solo dance performed by women, according to Sairam, but that's changing.

"It's significantly more open than it ever has been, which is really a delight for me to be able to teach young boys and men here, too," she said.

One of them is Arjun Acharya, who was turned on to the form by his sister, and has been studying with Sairam for 10 years.

"She is very understanding," he said. "She will never push you beyond what she knows you're capable of."

Acharya recently earned a "Winner With Distinction" award as part of the prestigious 2024 YoungArts, a multidisciplinary national arts competition for teenagers. Earlier this month, Acharya attended YoungArts week in Miami to train with internationally recognized dance artists.

A graduate of Stillwater High School, Acharya is majoring in biochemistry at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Like his teacher, he feels torn between his love of dance and his science and math-related interests.

And like his teacher, he wants to keep the possibility open for more dancing.

"I'm never going to close doors," Acharya said. "I'm going to keep all my options open, and keep dancing and keep working at the same time and just see what happens."

He isn't unique among Sairam's students in his pursuit of both academics and dancing. Aarthi Vijayakumar, a medical student at Harvard, has been featured on PBS for designing a NASA Genes in Space experiment to conduct on the International Space Station. She went to Yale for her undergraduate degree.

Vijayakumar plans to become a doctor but wants to keep dance as part of her life. During her holiday breaks, she leans in on bharatanatyam at Kala Vandanam, where she has been a student for 16 years.

"She's really been a mentor to me both as a person and a dancer," Vijayakumar said of Sairam, who has shown how she can be a scientist and an artist at the same time and weave the two together for an amazing career.

For her part, Sairam said her teaching philosophy focuses on each young student as a whole person. "I happen to teach dance, but I'm really developing young people," she said.

By incorporating a lot of questions into her teaching, Sairam also encourages her students to carve their own path about a future with dance. "Not aiming for excellence at somebody else's expense is a very important part of my approach," she said.

Once, one of Sairam's students put her hand on her hip and asked: "Do you have any kids?" Sairam responded that no, she didn't have any children. The young girl, around 7 years old, responded: "No, you have a lot of kids, you just don't take them home with you."