page_title: Neila Sathyalingam
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Neila Sathyalingam / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: Legendary Bharatanatyam danseuse, Rukmini Devi Arundale. Source: http://www.thehinduimages.com:8080/hindu/photoDetail.do?photoId=1045640. Taken in 1940 therefore Public Domain under Indian Copyright Law.
context_page_description: Neila Sathyalingam was a Singaporean classical Indian dancer, choreographer and instructor of Sri Lankan Tamil origin. An alumna of Kalakshetra in Madras under the tutelage of Srimathi Rukmini Devi Arundale, she emigrated with her family to Singapore in 1974. In 1977 she and her husband founded the performance arts company Apsaras Arts, which has staged performances throughout the world. She was the company's artistic director and continued to teach dance.
  In 1983, Neila was appointed the dance instructor and choreographer for the Indian Dance Group of the People's Association —a state board in Singapore—where she remains a resident choreographer. She was also an artistic adviser to Singapore's National Arts Council. For her contributions to dance, Neila was awarded the Singaporean Cultural Medallion in 1989. She became a Singapore citizen in 1994.
context_section_description: The second of four daughters of a well-to-do dental surgeon and a housewife, Neila Balendra was born in 1938 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). She began dancing at the age of five, and trained in the classical Indian dance traditions of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali and Manipuri at the Shanti Kumar School of Dance and the Kalaya School of Dance in Colombo. In 1954, she won the gold medal at the All-Ceylon Dance Festival and was selected to perform for Elizabeth II when the Queen visited Sri Lanka in April 1954 during her tour of the Commonwealth after acceding to the throne. Neila has said: "That was the day I decided I was going to devote my life to dance. My father wanted me to become a dental surgeon, but I refused". 
  At 18, she enrolled in Kalakshetra, a cultural academy located in Madras (now Chennai) which was established to preserve traditional values in Indian art and reputed to be one of the best dance institutions in India, under the tutelage of Srimathi Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–1986). She lived a regimented lifestyle, living in a thatched house with "snakes above and rats running below" and waking at 4:30am for dance practice every day. She completed her five-year course in two years, graduating with a first-class honours diploma in Bharatanatyam in 1957.
  Neila met her husband, Sathyalingam Suntharalingam, at Kalakshetra. The son of a Sri Lankan politician, C. Suntharalingam, he had graduated from the University of Madras with a Sangitha Sironmani (Degree in Music) and from Kalakshetra in 1955 with a Diploma in Music, and was then teaching Indian classical music theory and the playing of the Indian drum and cymbals at the academy. After a two-year courtship, they married in 1956 and moved back to Sri Lanka where they lived in a 40-ha farm just outside Colombo. Sathyalingam then taught dance in schools while raising her children, the first of whom was born in 1957.
  In May 1958, riots broke out in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Although the Sathyalingams received a tip-off that they had been targeted and managed to escape the violence, 80 Sinhalese rioters attacked and burned their home. Having lost their abode and all their possessions, they resettled in Colombo. In 1969 Neila returned to Kalakshetra to be trained as an instructor and to take up a postgraduate diploma course. She graduated in 1972 with a distinction and was appointed a dance teacher with Kalakshetra.
caption: Neila Sathyalingam trained under the legendary Bharatanatyam danseuse Rukmini Devi Arundale, photographed here in 1940.
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