Nivrritii Mahesh is a 17-year-old dancer performing Indian classical dance with grit, grace and the power of audio technology.
As a young kid, she would watch her mother teach Indian immigrants and their children Bharatanatyam, a technically-complex dance form that incorporates the expressive storytelling of Hindu mythology, melody and rhythm.
It was then that Mahesh began to aspire to become a dancer.
But first, she had to learn speech and language through intensive instruction from hearing-health professionals.
“I didn’t speak for the first five years, and I didn’t hear for the first four years,” she said.
Mahesh was born deaf. She uses cochlear implants in each ear, which present a unique challenge for hearing and dancing to music, said Nancy Simison, a teacher of the deaf, who works with Mahesh.
“Tones blend, rhythms sound flat, and melodies become lost,” Simison said.
Cochlear implant users can also have difficulty filtering out noise over noise, or instruments over instruments.
“To handle layered Indian classical music with live vocals, mridangam (drum), nattuvangam (cymbals), veena (a traditional Indian string instrument), and flute seemed unachievable,” Simison said.
Connecting to the beat
Even though cochlear implants have revolutionized access to sound for the deaf community – especially to aid speech – “the rich melodic and tonal qualities of music often don’t translate well through technology,” said Diana Gonzalez, an audiologist who works with Mahesh.
At a recent performance at the Learning Corridor in Hartford, the audience watched as Mahesh danced with precision and passion to a complicated rhythmic pattern of syllables – the jathi. In Bharatanatyam, the jathi is central to the main piece in a performance.
“I won’t be able to understand the beat or cues,” Mahesh said. “So I have to rely on the cymbals because that’s the main part of getting the beat.”
It’s here that Mahesh’s natural grace and grit find harmony with technology.
Two separate audio tracks were streamed into her cochlear implants via bluetooth. On one track were the live instruments. The other track was real-time cues from Aishwarya Chakravarthy, her teacher and mom, which helped Mahesh keep up with the beats she could not hear.
“She had to memorize the steps that went behind it, and we had to mathematically break it down,” said Chakravarthy, founder of Natyakshetram, a dance school based in Canton and South Windsor.
Simison and Gonzalez, the teacher and audiologist, wore digital modulation receivers in their ears during the performance to ensure the system was working like it was programmed.
As Mahesh danced, facial expressions and hand gestures depicted stories from Hindu mythology. Her feet moved in sync to the rhythm – giving a Connecticut audience a glimpse into an ancient Indian art form melded with modern sound technology.
“Nivi’s story is not about overcoming hearing loss,” Simison said. “It is about finding her culture and being a part of it every day.”
Mahesh said to her, dance is “an expression of perseverance and love.”
