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'I like the Lakshman dude...'

In a colourful, crowded room of more than 40 students -- white and black and brown and yellow -- one African-American girl wears a shirt that reads, 'Dance speaks many languages'.

The shirt seems to encapsulate the very reason Pranitha Jain is at this classroom today.

As a dancer-in-residency at the Andrew Cooke Magnet School for Fine Arts in Waukegan, Illinois, Jain, 39, is using dance to cross cultures and break boundaries.

She started her residency in mid-April, teaching students in first through fourth grades Bharatnatyam, with a final dance drama production of the Ramayan culminating the six-week programme.

"The outreach is very important to me," says Jain, who started her dance school 11 years ago after teaching in Pennsylvania. "I can keep doing it within the Indian community, but I would not talk about my community and art to anyone else. As an immigrant, it's very important to me to move out of my comfort zone."

Jain's Kalapriya Foundation Centre for Indian Performing Arts is based in Darien, Illinois, and consists of more than 75 students. But her outreach efforts have educated hundreds of students at more than 60 schools over the past 12 years.

"A lot of schools want to explore [Indian] culture through dance," says Jain, who is originally from New Delhi. "I go into the schools with pride in my identity and acceptance of them. I'm not imposing my culture... rather, it's an exchange of ideas."

And the students at Andrew Cooke are open and eager to learn. One third-grade girl, who plays the 'witch' in the school's production of Ramayan, explained that in the drama, "I like the Lakshman dude, but he doesn't like me, so he chops my nose off with a bow and arrow. Sometimes [dancing] feels embarrassing, but then you get used to it."

Another third-grader who plays Sita's father said she likes the Indian music the best. "Actually, I want to get the CD. It's soothing. You can sit down and relax to it."

As for Jain, they were a little hesitant to let her go last week when her six-week residency programme ended. One third-grader who likes Bharatnatyam because "you get to act like another person" said, "I wish [Jain] could stay here. She's fun to be with. She shows us how to [dance]. Last week, she talked about being scared on stage and embarrassed. She said you shouldn't be scared. We're just trying our best to do stuff and we're not professionals and the audiences knows that -- and they won't laugh."

Jain is just as fond of her students as they are of her. They may be new to Indian dance, but learning Bharatnatyam has come naturally. "They have a background in the arts; they already have an understanding of the aesthetics of art -- they just imbibe it," she says.

What Jain tries to develop is their concentration and focus as performers. After these six weeks, she has witnessed that these students have "become more centred. They've developed a quiet energy.

"They're not thinking of dance to move for the sake of movement. Their movements are bigger, their expression moving further. They're seeing dance as a vocabulary -- as a language."

The dance is not restricted to the school. Jain's five-year-old daughter Armani has also begun to learn it, in addition to ballet.

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