Sampradaya Dance Creations, a Canada-based Indian dance company founded in 1990, is globally renowned for its powerful, distinctive and innovative dance productions. Its founder, Lata Pada, has created dance productions that range from classical to contemporary Bharatanatyam, personal autobiographical narratives to the immigrant experience, sports to popular culture, spanning a diverse range of solo and ensemble choreography. Sampradaya Dance Creations is a leader in the Indian dance community in Canada, building partnerships with schools, social agencies for projects involving new immigrants and low-income families.
Lata today is a global artist whose vision for dance is influenced by her extensive travel across the world and her deep interest in the commonalities across global cultures. A regular motivational speaker and workshop leader for corporate and community organisations, she has collaborated with choreographers and dancers from different cultures and dance traditions and performed more than 1000 solo recitals worldwide. One of the important performances of her career was for the president of India, Shri. Ramaswamy Venkataraman, in 1992 at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi. Equally significant were her extensive performance tours when she performed at the celebrated Metropolitan Museum of the Arts (New York), The World Bank (Washington), International Arts Festival of China, Ibero Americano Theatre Festival (Colombia), in Mexico, WOMAD (Toronto), Festival of India (Indonesia), Ireland, England, Austria, etc.
She has the distinction of being the first South Asian artist to receive the honour of Order of Canada (2010). In January 2011, Lata was conferred the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the President of India, Pratibha Patil; in 2012, Lata was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal; in 2013, she was inducted in the Inaugural Legend’s Row of the City of Mississauga; the same year, she was named as one of Mississauga’s Ten Most Influential Citizens; in 2019, she was awarded the Mississauga Arts Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award, among several awards and honours for her contribution to the arts in Canada.
Revealed by Fire: A journey of transformation
One of her seminal choreographies was the highly acclaimed autobiographical multimedia dance-theatre work, Revealed by Fire (2001). It was an intensely moving portrayal of her devastating personal tragedy from the Air India disaster of June 1985 in which she lost her husband and two daughters. It traces her journey from grief to healing, to renewal with courage and dignity as she dealt with her loss. It went on to win many accolades including NOW Magazine’s Best Ten in the Decade 2000–2010 and was called the Most Important Dance Work in 2001.
Lata is the eldest of four children born to Malati and B.N. Srinivasan, an electrical engineer in the Indian Navy. Due to his frequent postings at different locations, they studied at different places, learnt various regional languages and developed a love for travel at a young age. Malati was an administrator in the insurance sector; their maternal grandfather was a respected scientist and paternal grandfather a lawyer. An education with the arts, literature and extra-curricular activities was an important part of their upbringing.
She was just about seven when her dance training started as her parents saw her inclination for the art form. It was dance that fostered an artistic and creative side to her as a young girl. Being the eldest, “I was expected to be the most responsible, covering up for my siblings when they got into trouble. I always looked up to my mother, for her elegance, her artistic and culinary skills – she continues to be the biggest influence in my life,” she shares rather nostalgically. She went to Elphinstone College, Bombay, for undergraduate studies. “It was a dynamic place of academic, artistic and political exchange.”
Marriage to Vishnu Pada, a geologist, in 1964 took her to Thompson, Manitoba. “This remote town was in stark contrast to the huge metropolis of Bombay; it was a small mining town but I quickly got used to it. It all felt like a huge adventure. Getting used to the minus 40-degree temperature was, however, not an easy part of settling down. Our five-year stay in Thompson was an invaluable opportunity to experience authentic Canadian life, its values and the history and struggle behind the country’s development. We were then transferred to another remote mining project on the island of Sulawesi (Indonesia) in 1979. With our two young daughters, Brinda and Arti, we spent 10 years there and fell in love with the people, the culture and the performing arts of Indonesia. I continue to have a very strong bond with Indonesia, emotionally, linguistically and artistically.”
Lata and Vishnu complemented each other as a couple. Not only did he encourage her to continue her dance training in India, but supported her career as a professional artist. Encouraging her to explore her adventurous side, he taught her tennis and snorkelling in the coral reefs of Indonesia! In 1979, they went back to Canada, this time to Sudbury, where they became active in the Indian community, in the cultural activities and the festivals. And then the tragedy struck!
In early June 1985, Lata left for Bombay to rehearse with her guru for a performance in Bangalore. Vishnu, Brinda and Arti boarded an Air India Kanishka flight from Toronto to India on 22 June 1985. In the early hours of 23 June, the aircraft exploded mid-air. All 329 passengers and crew on board were killed in this horrific an act of aviation terrorism. “I was already in Bombay, rehearsing for a performance, waiting to receive them when I got the devastating news,” Lata trembles as she shares hiding a tear.
“As a family, we loved travelling and experiencing new adventures. Being a young mother, I was very close to my daughters – spending time shopping, practicing our dance, etc. They would invite their friends over who would stay overnight and we would stay up late and watch movies. Brinda and Arti kept me young at heart; with them, I stayed updated with the latest music, fashion and trends of all sorts.” At the time of the crash, they were 18 and 15 years old, brimming with life, with a promising future ahead of them. Life came to a standstill, the void was desolate and unbearable; ultimately, her gradual return to dance provided the catharsis and healing in her life.
Dance as a catalyst for healing
Lata’s art has brought her many awards and recognitions. But what pushed her to explore the medium of dance to find meaning in her life was her tireless advocacy and activism for the Air India victim’s families who were affected on that fateful day. Canada has recorded it as its worst act of aviation terrorism. For more than two decades, she was one of the spokespersons against the dastardly act of terrorism, naming the trial that acquitted the accused a travesty of justice and pushing for the inquiry to investigate lapses in negligence, aviation security, law enforcement etc that allowed the bombing to take place.
Her art and dance were the power that helped nurture her rebirth. Trained by Guru Kalyanasundaram and Guru Kalanidhi Narayanan, she owes her healing from the devastating tragedy to them and to making dance her anchor in her life.
At the age of 48, she completed her masters’ degree in Fine Arts from the York University. Today, she is an adjunct professor at York and is regularly invited to speak at performing arts conferences. Lata was awarded the 2012 Chalmers Foundation Senior Fellowship to research the performance traditions of the Ramayana in Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. A founding member of the South Asian Advisory Committee of the Royal Ontario Museum, she is a member at many international arts and dance committees globally, like the Canadian Dance Assembly, CPAMO. She has been on the Board of the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga and on the National Dance Advisory Committee of the Canada Council for the Arts. As she expanded Sampradaya, she also took it to actively participate in the formation of South Asian Dance Alliance in Canada and DanceIntense Conference for the development of next-generation Indian dancers in Canada.