Celine Schein Das didn’t expect to fall in love with Kathak or Indian culture when she was a student at San Francisco State University in the 90s. Over thirty years later, she is still passionate about both. Das talks about raising her two daughters, Shivaranjani, 11, and Saadhvi, 10, her role as Executive Director of the Chitresh Das Institute, and maintaining the legacy of her late husband Kathak legend Pandit Chitresh Das.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
Portraits were made in San Mateo and San Rafael, Calif., on April 9, 2023 and the interview took place on Aug. 7, 2023 via Zoom. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How did you get introduced to Indian culture?
I studied ballet from age five. My mother studied tap and African-Haitian dance and taught tap to kids and [also] disco in the 70s. She always had me around different forms of dance. When I went to San Francisco State University, I started taking different forms of ballet. (The) first was African-Haitian. Then a friend of mine told me about Pandit Chitresh Das and we watched his class in May of 1991. In the Fall, I signed up for the class. That was my first substantial introduction to South Asian culture.
What about the Kathak class prompted you to continue with it?
I just remember being amazed by it, and by him, but I was still very much a ballet student. I was taking 10 dance classes a week. I love dance, right? I was taking contemporary dance and ballet and African-Haitian and Kathak. Then I went to France as an exchange student in ‘92 and ‘93. My ballet teacher had a heart attack and was no longer teaching. When I came back to the US, I kind of just dove headfirst into Kathak. I loved it, but I didn’t necessarily see it as a major focus in my life.
He (Pandit Chitresh Das) was teaching as part of the Dance Ethnology program at San Francisco State University, one of only two in the country where they had dance classes in diverse forms, and that was due to Dr. Nontsizi Cayou. I don’t know how she did it. A black woman in the late 80s in the highly political world of universities established a dance ethnology program.
Schein Das says it was the first university-accredited Kathak course in the country. Each class was three hours long, with two hours dedicated to practical dance classes and one hour of theory.
That was a big deal to recognize the depth, the cultural understanding needed, and the cultural context needed for these art forms.
That program was getting threatened to be cut. That propelled me into getting involved in another way and another level and combined my love and passion for dance and activism. So I worked with these other students; we started a student organization called the Coalition for the Advancement of Dance. We raised money, and we presented a concert in ‘94. We were able to pay the artists each $1,000. Chitreshji performed. Slowly I started spending more time with him and studying more. So that drew me in more and just over time I got to know him.
My mom would always say that I’d come home, talking about him all the time. I never thought about him as a partner because he was so much older than me. We didn’t get involved romantically or have a relationship for five years, until after I studied with him. He was not looking for a young partner at all. But love knows no boundaries. And I always say that it’s not that we had the same vision, but that our visions overlapped, and kind of fed into one another because they were different.
Once you and Chitreshji became a couple, what was your relationship to Indian culture and Kathak?
That’s a good question. I’ve had people say, “Oh, you have adopted Indian culture.” That’s not accurate, because I’m not Indian. I don’t know that you can adopt a culture. I know that the way that he talked about Indian culture, the way that he presented the art form, and the kind of things that he chose to focus on, resonated very powerfully. You know, you go to India, and you see sarees, and they are works of art. I like art. I like to dress up. So it was more like oh, I should dress up this way, or I should look this way, or I should be connected to the culture in this way. I have always been very curious. I’ve always been interested in different cultures, in breaking out of one way of thinking, and looking at things from different perspectives.
If I’m going to an Indian classical concert, then I wear a saree. That was my understanding of it. I don’t know if I was trying to fill a role or if it was, well, this is the proper thing to do, or more respectful. I had to find a balance with those things within myself. That’s been a process over time.
Did that relationship to Indian culture and heritage change once you and Chitreshji were together?
I don’t know that it changed, except that I was around it all the time. He came to the US when he was 25. There were some critics saying, “Oh, he’s westernized!” or stuff like that. [But] I would notice how when the microwave was going, or if he was vacuuming, that would become his drone, you know, his sur note, and he would start humming from that. He developed this kind of chakkar, you know the pirouettes, we call them California chakkar, because he developed them in California because he was inspired by ice skaters. Everything that he was surrounded by connected to his art, to his culture. That was one of the things that was really remarkable about him. He would innovate, but it was always within the context of the art form. Artists and musicians would come and stay with us, and we would spend time in India. So I was around the art form.
In many ways it’s evolved. I studied many different dance forms. I see myself overall as an advocate of Indian classical dance and music, but I’m really an advocate of all dance and music. I would say that Indian culture, the way that Chitresh-ji brought it into my life, has given me so much joy, so much access to beauty, to understanding, to incredible people. And, I feel, having been given those gifts, it’s a responsibility, it’s a gift to be able to work with this art form, particularly the way that he approached it, and his legacy. I do the organization’s (Chitresh Das Institute) social media partly because I’m good at marketing, but partly because I get to watch videos! When COVID was going on, we made a short dance film with Alka Raghuram, Agni. I watched it every day. Every day. It moved something in me.
I feel because Indian culture has given me so much and because I enjoy the art so much, a responsibility and a fortunate opportunity to do what I can to support it. I have children so I want them to have access. Also the next generations, not just my kids.
How do people react when they find out there is a non-Indian running an Indian dance organization, even though you were Chitreshji’s partner and wife until his passing in 2015?
I don’t really know. It’s not something that people tend to say openly. I’ve had a lot of looks, you know, sideways glances. I had to kind of come to terms with that. I’ve struggled with it, particularly after he passed. [When he was alive] the focus was him, so it wasn’t really in my mind, whatever people thought or didn’t think. It was about him.
But when he passed, then I really had to think about it. There’s this idea of are you taking up space from others that could be filling in? He talked about this. He was very explicit that it was not about your ethnicity. What he was very clear about is that it was how deeply you practice the art. I’m talking here, of course, about dancers and if you were handing it down to the community.
If you’re honoring the elders (classical artists) he didn’t care if they were Indian, non-Indian; but [people] who would [say] I want to learn a little bit and then go off and do my thing–he was not okay with that.
Am I here to support the next generation who wants to pursue art? Absolutely! My job is to ultimately replace myself. That’s something that I’m always looking at. I see it as my job to build up the Chitresh Das Institute and whatever other support I can do for Indian classical art so that it’s sustainable so the next generation can take it.
This culture ultimately is Indian. It’s not American. He was the connection to India. When we went back, it was due to the relationships he had with people. So I’m trying to figure out what that will be going forward. Because he was here basically because of colonialism, right? There was a lack of opportunity [in India]. That’s simplistic to say, but in a big-picture way [it is true]. That was why in 2002, I encouraged him to reestablish his parents’ institution in India (Chhandam School of Kathak India) because I felt the Indian kids should have access to him. His teaching and his artistry, that should be accessed in India, and to create a connection that cannot be broken.
You have two daughters, Shivaranjani and Saadhvi. Both are studying Kathak and learning Bangla. How do you navigate that?
Well, he (Pandit Chitresh Das) said to Charlotte,* “I don’t have to worry about the girls, they’re going to dance because their mother is going to make them dance. I can’t make them do anything. You can’t make anybody do anything. So I’m thankful that they do love the dance. But ultimately, what they do in their lives is up to them. What I want, and what I’m committed to doing, is making sure they have the highest level of training in the dance knowledge of the culture, which means ultimately spending time there (India), because there’s only so much that can be accomplished here (USA).
Once they started seeing how exciting it is, how rich it is, how fun it is, and getting friends in the dance, that sense of community, they have started to take it on themselves.
I see my responsibility as trying to give them as much access to the dance, to the language, to the music, all of it, as much as possible, until they can determine where they land.
Shivranjani and Saadhvi, how do you think you’ll both connect to Indian culture in the future?
Shivaranjani, 11: I think that I’ll try to dance as long as I possibly can. There’s also the fact that I am Indian and that’s never going to change. It’s always nice to have a community and I have tons of friends that are Indian and I have family in India that I can always connect with.
Saadhvi, 10: I will try to dance as long as I can. I also want to learn more about my history and about India itself.
*Charlotte Moraga is the Artistic Director of the Chitresh Das Institute
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This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
This series was made possible in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program.