Ananda Shankar Jayant on Her Fight With Cancer

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Renowned classical Indian dancer Ananda Shankar Jayant was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. She tells her personal story of not only facing the disease but dancing through it, and gives a performance revealing the metaphor of strength that helped her do it.

With precision and sparkling grace, Ananda Shankar Jayant performs and teaches the classical dance styles of Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi.

Ananda Shankar Jayant is trained in two traditional forms of classical Indian dance, Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi. Both forms require long training and precise timing to express their essence -- and both forms, in Shankar Jayant's hands, are capable of exploring deep truths.

As a choreographer and performer, she uses dance to talk about gender issues (as in 1999's What About Me?), mythology and philosophy, setting these carefully handed-down forms of dance onto a modern stage. She leads the Shankarananda Kalakshetra school in Hyderabad and Secunderabad, and is a scholar of dance and art, lecturing frequently on both throughout India.

"My language called dance paints before you a canvas of life and beyond -- of our fallible self groping in the darkness for that light of eternity."