Losing herself in the dance

Like many little girls, around the age of 7, Priya Shah balked at attending her weekly dance lessons. She quit “once and for all” on three different occasions.

Prompted by her mother’s encouragement, Shah said she “finally stuck with it,” beginning the physical and spiritual journey of Indian classical dance (Bharatanatyam) that culminated in her graduation performance in August.

“It’s a religiously-based art that centers on Hinduism and has helped me connect with my culture,” Shah said. “I love it because it has two sides—the dance and movement side, but then there’s the emotional side that is the religious storytelling.”

While a student at Oak Mountain Middle School, the now 18-year-old Meadowbrook resident was also connecting with her culture through classes at Hindi Pathshala of Birmingham, learning to read, write and speak the Hindi language. Studying at the nonprofit school for four years, she was eventually asked to teach kindergarteners, tutoring them for two years in the Hindi alphabet and basic sentence structure.

“It was weird at first because I was only in the ninth grade and had just finished my Hindi classes myself,” she said. “But the kids were really goofy and sweet because they were so young, and I really enjoyed it.”

In addition to her Indian dance lessons, Shah had taken up ballet and, with the talent and interest she exhibited, her parents decided to enroll her in the Alabama School of Fine Arts dance program for the seventh grade. But after two years of studying ballet, pointe and modern dance, Shah said she realized she didn’t want to be a professional dancer. She switched to the math and science program in search of a “stronger academic path.”

Her mother, Samata Shah, said it was the right thing to do.

“Though talented in dance, Priya realized it was not the career for her, and she was always very good in math and science,” she said. “I was a bit worried about her changing over, but it worked out very well.”

Despite changes in her academic life, Shah’s pursuit of Bharatanatyam remained on track as she continued her training off-campus with Birmingham instructor Suma Vitta.

“In the early years we focus on dance and movement, but in our early teens we begin telling the stories through facial expressions and dance,” she said. “It’s a lot more difficult because the dancer is responsible for telling the story, and that’s when I fell in love with it—when we began more complex movements and different choreography.”

According to Shah, the storytelling can include tales about a Hindi god named Krishna and his childhood, when he was playful and mischievous, and then his later years when he had to kill an evil uncle or tame a giant demon snake.

“There is a big range in drama and when you start, it’s incredibly hard,” she said. “And part of the experience is that you are supposed to lose yourself and forget who you are. That was extremely challenging.”

Shah had not yet achieved that goal as she approached her graduation performance on Aug. 15. She had begun preparing a year in advance for the three-hour solo event and intensified her training through the summer with daily practice and multiple individual classes.

According to Shah, the performance was broken into different pieces of different lengths with pauses in between. And while it was strenuous, she said it wasn’t as difficult as she thought.

“At a certain point, I didn’t really feel it and forgot I was dancing for people because I actually did lose myself,” she said. “It was during a devotional dance about beliefs and faith in God. And while it won’t happen in every performance, it truly was an eye-opening experience.”

Samata Shah said she and her husband, Shailesh, are very proud of their daughter.

“I came here from India 28 years ago and realized when we had our daughters how important culture is,” Samata Shah said. “This is a 5,000-year-old dance form that tells about our history. And not only has Priya learned it, she is now qualified to teach others.”

Shah said she won’t be teaching anyone for a while, as she’s taking a vacation from dance to concentrate on her freshman year at UAB, where she’s majoring in biomedical engineering. While a senior at ASFA, she was required to take part in a regional science fair and, in search of a subject, contacted Joel Berry, associate professor of UAB’s department of biomedical engineering.

According to Shah, Berry talked to her about an idea he had but hadn’t worked on — the creation of a model of atherosclerosis, a disease of the kidney that causes plaque in the arteries.

Shah’s work earned her first place in the engineering category in the UAB regional science fair and qualified her to go to the state science fair hosted by the University of Alabama at Huntsville. There, she took first place in the biomedical and materials engineering category and was chosen one of four best in show winners, which took her to an international science fair in Pittsburgh.

“Well, there were 78 countries represented and that was the end of my science fair journey,” she said. “It was a week of great activities, and I got to present my research. A wonderful experience.”

Shah is continuing her research as part of the UAB science and technology honors program and will present a thesis based on her work at the end of the year, much to the delight of Berry.

“Priya continues to exceed all expectations that I have for her, and I would rank her as among the top three freshman undergraduate students that I have encountered in my career,” Berry said. “If she continues on her current trajectory, she will undoubtedly succeed in graduate school and rise to the challenge of becoming an independent academic biomedical engineer and certainly make a contribution to the field.”

And though she vowed to take a break from dancing, Shah said she and a friend have recently organized an Indian fusion dance team that mixes hip-hop, Bollywood, a north Indian folk dance and Bharatanatyam.

Asked how she’s balancing such a busy schedule, Shah admits “it’s been a bit hard to get into the groove.”

“So far there’s enough time in the day, and I’ve been able to figure everything out,” she said. “So far it’s manageable and it’s great fun.”