When the Student Becomes the Teacher

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  Ahmedabad, India
Monday, March 27, 2006

For longer than my memory allows me to remember I have been captivated by music. It's difficult to explain why, since I don't come from an especially musical family--my mother's a physician and my father's an engineer-but for my entire life I have always been drawn to the patterns of sound, known as rhythm. At a time before the self became conscious, I could remember entertaining my parent's dinner guests as I would moonwalk across the living room floor to Billie Jean. Around eighteen years ago, I decided to seek professional help-the musical kind that is. Thanks to the smooth steps of one Gene Kelly and another Gregory Hines, at the age of six I decided to begin tap dancing lessons. I can still picture my first encounter with the dance form. It was a warm early-afternoon in Chicago, my Mom and, I behind her, had just walked into a dance studio. There were a row of seats in the front waiting room, reserved for gossiping mothers and over-worked fathers, and then a door from which the heavy sounds of metal against wood resonated. As the door from which the sound emanated opened, I stared in shock at the number of girls dressed in pink too-toos, stomping away. I immediately felt whatever manliness a six year old has threatened, and gave my mom a quick shake of the head, before insisting that I was no longer interested. But my interest in music and dance never waned.

We moved to Tucson a few months after my first encounter with tap dancing. I decided to give it another shot visiting a studio located close to our new house. This time I found another guy there, going at it alone. In a breath of relief, secure that with another male there I would not have to end up in any sort of too-too, I signed up for the class the next day. I was by no means a natural. It took me over a year to actually get used to my tap shoes. The fact that Gene Kelly made it look so easy didn't help either. In my first three years of tap dance I struggled to find "a" rhythm, let alone my own. I clunked around helplessly, braved ridiculous costumes, all in search of a beat.

Fifteen years of late night practices, refining steps I learned my first day of class, and warring with my often uncooperative feet, I can say I've finally found a rhythm-perhaps not always the right rhythm-but 'a' rhythm. I feel comfortable saying this because suddenly the student finds himself as teacher, and in most cases, to teach, you've got to know something.

For the last three weeks I've been trying to pass on my musical understanding to the Arts and Crafts Kids at Manav Sadhna, an NGO that serves underprivileged children. Many of the kids I work with live in the slums next to the Gandhi Ashram. They own but a few pieces of clothing and often live in one bedroom tenements. Yet, for the one hour I spend with them each day, you wouldn't be able to tell that they come from underprivileged backgrounds. Their faces gleam with smiles as they make up a new dance move echoing the words, "Boom-Chicka-Boom, Chicka, Boom-Boom-Boom."

Since the taal (the Hindi word for rhythm) workshop is a bit ad hoc, each day with the kids is a bit different. Some days I have the kids sit in a circle and listen to different rhythmic variations from the Bollywood movie, aptly named, "Taal". As they listen to the unorthodox mixture of musical instruments, I have them count to themselves, "1,2,3,4." Soon enough through the conglomeration of sounds, like some unreadable text, they are able to decipher a simple beat. In unison you can see them pat their legs as they whisper, "One, two, three, four." It is an amazing sight for a teacher. On the first day, they could barely count to four keeping a steady beat, now they were all patting their legs to the beat of a very difficult song. I soon challenged the kids even further. I broke them up into three groups and had one group count single time, one count double time, and the third count triple time. To my, and perhaps their, amazement, within a few moments, they were keeping time on their own, with each group counting their own rhythm, each group relying on the other.

In a matter of three weeks, I have learned much more than I've taught. I've found a type of innocence lost in the every day worries of the West. While these kids may have a better sense of what rhythm is and how music plays a role in our everyday lives, they have taught me the importance of listening, of preparing, and of teaching. Like most of my trip, my workshop was prepared on an impulse. I was sitting in Bhuj when I realized for the fist time in my life I was not actively learning dance or playing music. Coupling my desire to reinitiate my relationship with rhythm, I thought India would be the perfect place to not only learn, but also teach. From there I approached a friend and Manav Sadhna and the rest unfolded over the last four weeks.

Even as I type this I feel like my thirst for sound has been re-wet. My foot taps, and the keys of my keyboard speak in jittery, staccato tones as I try to write about something that really needs to be heard.

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