Have art, will travel

/

It's not quite 8:30 a.m. when Surapsari pulls onto the grassy parking area at the Waldorf School of Sarasota and starts unloading the back of her Kia SUV. As always, she is a few minutes early.

Video camera and tripod. Boom box and music. Suitcase on rollers, stuffed with props — gilt crowns, yards of Asian fabric, baskets of flower petals, a silver bell.

The Japanese-born dancer has already been up for hours, carefully applying her elaborate makeup, securely pinning on a waist-length braided wig, donning her brocade costume, dozens of jangling bracelets and several intricate hair decorations.

Surapsari, a Florida Teaching Artists, demonstrates steps from the Indian dance form Bharatanatyam to students at the Sarasota Waldorf School. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Surapsari, a Florida Teaching Artists, demonstrates steps from the Indian dance form Bharatanatyam to students at the Sarasota Waldorf School. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

She slings a bag with more supplies over one shoulder, tucks the tripod under one arm, grasps the handle of the roller bag and strides off at a rapid clip toward the front door.

"Can't afford to hire anyone," she says, acknowledging her solo status as an itinerant teaching artist whose schedule and necessities differ on any given day. "It's a small-budget program."

Inside, she sets up in a cramped classroom where a small fourth/fifth grade class will soon convene, covering the blackboard with an Asian wall hanging and laying out props in order on a table before starting a recording of sitar music on the CD player. Normally when she teaches "Dancing Ancient Indian Civilization," she uses a Power Point presentation, but given a Waldorf mandate of no technology, she has printed color Xeroxes of the ancient artwork she plans to reference instead.

The well-behaved students file in quietly and take seats in a semi-circle, facing front. They are excited but restrained, raising their hands for questions and considerately acquiescing to peers.

The presentation today focuses on Bharatanatyam, the eastern Indian dance form that is among the most ancient in the world. Surapsari teaches some mudras, the hand and finger positions that convey particular meanings, and passes around pictures of an ancient statue of a dancer, noting the similarities to her own colorful and exotic attire. She talks about ancient civilization in India — the trade, the farming, the infrastructure ("They were very advanced. They had houses with flush toilets!").

Finally, she solicits help in enacting a story told in dance about the god Krishna "who was very handsome and very naughty." A beaming Sabrina Benoit, 11, is chosen to be the princess Sita. Two boys vying to be Prince Ramah settle the decision amiably with a "scissors, paper, rock."

Waldorf School fourth-grader Sabrina Benoit takes the role of the princess to reenact a dance story told by Florida Teaching Artist Surapsari. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Waldorf School fourth-grader Sabrina Benoit takes the role of the princess to reenact a dance story told by Florida Teaching Artist Surapsari. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

The others are given instruments to play or flower petals to strew. Surapsari hits the remote control for the pre-taped music and dialogue and it streams clearly and instantly. The classroom teacher starts a video camera that will document the class for future clients.

Everything goes according to plan. With minutes left in her allotted time, Surapsari rewards each student with a bindi, a small sticker to be placed on the forehead.

"It's not a fashion statement," she says. "It means we were all born with wisdom."

Within an hour, she has repacked her rolling bag, gathered up her supplies and exchanged her belled ankle bracelets and bare feet for black socks and practical street shoes that look incongruous with her ethnic costume.

"It was my joy and honor to share this wonderful culture with you," she says as she exits. "Namaste."

This is how it's supposed to go — smoothly, successfully, on schedule and without a hitch.

This is how it almost never goes.

A peripatetic life

Surapsari — the single name she uses professionally — is an accomplished performer specializing in the traditional dances, theatre, and shadow puppetry of Bali, Java, and India. In 2000, with her husband, a native of Puerto Rico, she established the Puranama Sari Balinese Dance Company, which performs the temple dances of Bali with sartorial authenticity and historical accuracy.

A native of Japan and a student of the dance and theater of Asia and India, Surapsari (her professional name) has been a Florida Teaching Artist for the past five years. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

A native of Japan and a student of the dance and theater of Asia and India, Surapsari (her professional name) has been a Florida Teaching Artist for the past five years. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

But since 2010, Surapsari's "day job," if it can be called such, is as an itinerant teaching artist offering a wide variety of lessons, residencies, workshops and after-school programs focused on Asian dance, culture, history and tradition. Although a member of the Florida Association of Teaching Artists, she is essentially a freelance artist.

It's an "if this is Tuesday it must be Belgium" kind of existence, with all the hassles of a self-employed contractor and none of the benefits of a regular salary or a consistent schedule. The amount of work she obtains correlates to the amount of effort she puts into creating and marketing her offerings.

The amount of payoff?

That varies too, from a reasonable check to a child's smile.

Every day is different

Surapsari checks in at the front desk at Fruitville Elementary School and heads to a portable classroom for her third session with a group of preschool children with autism spectrum disorders.

Long before her residency began, she researched autism through books, movies and conversations with parents of affected children. She has observed this class in advance and spoken with teachers and aides about the students' routines, structures and disciplinary system. She knows to avoid loud noises, overstimulation and requests to sit still.

Still, flexibility, adaptation and hands-on guidance are the name of the game. Even with two teachers and two aides, keeping everyone on task is a challenge.

Vuk Zugic participates in an art project during Surapsari's residency at his Fruitville Elementary School class. / Photo courtesy Surapsari

Vuk Zugic participates in an art project during Surapsari's residency at his Fruitville Elementary School class. / Photo courtesy Surapsari

One little boy is immediately distracted, repeating a phrase and continually patting his bottom.

"Oh, poor boy, you have a boo boo, do you?" Surapsari says sympathetically.

Actually, what he has is a "poo poo" — full drawers. As an aide whisks him off for a quick change, another child bolts from a welcome circle. Surapsari escorts her back, never losing her place in the lyrics of her hello song or her memory of each child's name.

Short attention spans dictate frequent changes of activity. Since it's shortly before Valentine's Day, Surapsari moves the students to a table where, in front of each seat, there is a paper plate she's pre-cut with a heart shape that will stand up like a crown when placed on a child's head.

After decorating their hats with crayons and the shiny stickers she's provided, Surapsari takes pictures of the children and everyone dances the "Hokey Pokey" in their new headgear.

As the sessions ends, Surapsari sighs in relief — no disasters.

"I get nervous every time, whether it's three students or 300," she admits. "Every group presents a different challenge."

Detailed demands

Surapsari joined the Association of Florida Teaching Artists two years ago, hoping to broaden the range of her outreach after several years of arranging performances mostly through local libraries.

"I was happy to open the program at the libraries, even though the money is not there," says the 49-year-old mother of one, in an accent still thick with native inflections. "But then I learned that the kids who really need this kind of enrichment don't often go to the libraries. So I thought, what about the public schools?"

She took a four-week summer course offered through the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota to understand better how to tailor her offerings to accommodate school standards and grade requirements. At the time, Florida had just adopted the Common Core standards, requiring specific lesson elements and measurable outcomes, something that requires hours of pre-planning and post-substantiation.

Many lured to becoming teaching artists by the freedom to create their own schedule and content decide the career is not for them when they realize the bureaucratic maze and mountain of paperwork involved. Surapsari's husband is one.

Surapsari's varied presetnations range from performances to workshops to classroom residencies, like this one for a group of pre-school students at Fruitville Elementary. / Photo courtesy Surapsari

Surapsari's varied presetnations range from performances to workshops to classroom residencies, like this one for a group of pre-school students at Fruitville Elementary. / Photo courtesy Surapsari

"He said, 'This isn't for me, it's too time consuming," she says. "It's very meticulous, very nit-picky stuff and many people don't want to have to deal with that, especially after the Common Core changed a lot of standards for lessons. Many people who took the course with me two years ago didn't continue because it was so labor intensive."

Surapsari, on the other hand, is ultra-organized and almost obsessively detail-oriented. She has developed extensive lesson plans, study guides, and parental involvement sheets for a variety of courses ranging from "Stories from Around the World" to "Dancing Ancient Civilizations." And still she remains open to accommodating requests outside her normal programming.

"It's crazy, I offer everything from Balinese dance to shadow puppets to performances," she says. "But each school has its own needs and if they have a request, I come up with everything. It's demanding, but I like that, because it allows me to be creative."

During the last school year, she did four performances and six workshops, in and around Sarasota County. This year, she will teach for the first time in North Carolina, a position for which she was referred by a friend. Since almost every job comes about by word of mouth, the expanded territory is welcome. On the other hand, it means even more preparation.

"If I take a request, I come up with everything," she says. "And since you have to create study guides to meet each state's standards, going out of Florida just means more work."

Expect the unexpected

Setting up for her second consecutive day at the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences, Surapsari plans to repeat the presentation she gave to two assemblies the day before. The screen is in place for her Power Point presentation, the props laid out on a table, the music queued.

There has already been one glitch: Despite having brought with her several different cable connections, the hands-free mic she's planned to use is not compatible with the school's technology.

But when she learns, just minutes before a steady stream of students begin to file into the gymnasium that, in fact, she will not be addressing a new group of students, but rather the same ones she's had the day before — and is thus expected to present an entirely different lesson — she visibly pales. This is not what she thought her contract dictated.

Surapsari juggles a hand held mic while demonstrating for over 120 students during at assembly at the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Surapsari juggles a hand held mic while demonstrating for over 120 students during at assembly at the Sarasota School of Arts and Sciences. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Turning her back to the voluble group, she takes a few to compose herself, touching her chakras, performing a murmured meditation. For several long minutes, her hand remains fixed on her chin, her brow furrowed.

Yet when she turns to face the noisy, boisterous assembly of more than 120 students, she appears unfazed. She plunges into an interactive dance lesson, made up on the fly.

However, because she needs her hands to demonstrate, she must constantly put down the hand-held mic, which makes it impossible for her voice to be heard over the fractious group. The "Namaste" greeting she attempts to teach — and an accompanying prayer about paying respect "to the universe, to your teacher and your self" — goes nearly unheard.

Against the odds, within 10 minutes she's managed to get even the rowdy boys engaged and everyone — even the most self-conscious or obstinately contemptuous — is stepping, heels first, in a circle and contorting their fingers into the appropriate mudras.

For the four sessions she gives here, Surapsari will be paid $1,500. It seems like a nice hourly wage, but it doesn't take into account the hours of preparation, the investment in costuming, the dance instruction she takes herself whenever possible — nor the stress she experiences when everything she's planned goes out the window.

Students as SSAS try the "mudras," or hand symbols of Indian dance, they've been taught by Florida Teaching Artist Surapsari. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Students as SSAS try the "mudras," or hand symbols of Indian dance, they've been taught by Florida Teaching Artist Surapsari. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

"Even after a residency starts, I'm always ready to be flexible," she says. "Not just Plan A, but Plan B, C and D. There are always surprises, and if there are none, I think, 'Wow, you're kidding, no changes?'

"But this," she adds, shaking her head, "this was the biggest surprise ever."

'10 cents an hour'

To market herself, Surapsari created a website, became an actively-involved AFTA member, joined EdExploreSRQ, Sarasota County's online resource of arts offerings for teachers, and allied herself with VSA Florida, which offers arts and cultural experiences to people with disabilities.

Not one of those alliances guaranteed her a single contract.

"Being on the roster of the Florida Teaching Artists or VSA doesn't assure you any work," Surapsari says. "Mostly it's word of mouth, people who have seen my classes or performances. It's all on me."

Yet AFTA artists are not supposed to market themselves to individual schools, but rather go through established funneling channels like EdExplore.

"But if we sit here, they don't find us," Surapsari says. "Everywhere I go, I always have a brochure with me."

During the summers, she returns to the library presentations, though this year she has reserved three weeks for a return to Bali, where she learned so many of the lessons she is now sharing.

She's happy to be in Florida, a state where funding for the arts is far better than in Hawaii, where she lived previously. While VSA assignments pay next to nothing — "I consider it a community service when I do them" — anything obtained through EdExplore is 100 percent funded.

Still, if you account for supplies, travel, documentation, bookwork, and website management, the remuneration is hardly munificent. Performances with her husband at festivals and cultural events pay more, but are infrequent.

"My husband I have a private joke about my making 10 cents an hour," she says. "But artists never opt for stability. If I wanted a stable job, I'd be doing something else."

Adjusting, adapting

With careful penmanship, Surapsari writes on the chalk board a greeting to start her next session of "Stories from Around the World" workshop with a small group of home-schooled 6- and 7-year-olds from the Sarasota Cooperative Learning Project gathered at Bahia Vista Mennonite Church.

Surapsari works with a group of homeschooled students who are part of the Sarasota Cooperative Learning Project. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Surapsari works with a group of homeschooled students who are part of the Sarasota Cooperative Learning Project. / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Apa Kabar. ("How are you?")

Five children sit on their heels atop plastic chairs, the better to compete for the highest raised hand. Last week they learned a similar phrase in Chinese — "Ni hao?" — and they are anxious to display their mastery.

As she moves her finger downward on the map from China, Surapsari asks, "Which direction is down? North, South, East or West?" Today they move South to Indonesia, which she explains is made up of many little islands.

Traditionally and ideally the story of the "mouse deer" she has chosen for the lesson would be told with shadow puppets. But, not unusually, classroom conditions are less than ideal; one wall is full floor-to-ceiling windows, with the full mid-day sun streaming in and no possibility of making the room dark.

No problem. Along with the usual baggage she's hefted from her car, Surapsari has brought two-dimensional figures cut from black posterboard and attached to long sticks to use as puppets.

She introduces the story's main character — "A mouse deer has the head of a mouse and the body of a deer and kids in Indonesia know him as kids in America know Mickey Mouse" — and shows a short video of an authentic shadow puppet play.

Then, with the children seated on the carpet, she manipulates the stick puppets in time with a narrative she's previously recorded using a different voice for each character — the mouse deer, an elephant, a crocodile.

When she finishes, the children clamor for another story. Instead she guides them to a table where she's laid out puppet templates and supplies.

"It would be easier for me to just entertain them for an hour," she says, "but I feel it's important for them to learn something."

The students trace and cut out their own puppets, hinging them with butterfly clasps so their appendages can move independently.

It's a little rushed but within an hour, Surapsari has packed everything back up and is moving with her usual swift and purposeful step back to her car.

She'll be back next week with an entirely different lesson.

A fulfilling career

Given the demands, unpredictability and random pay, it might be hard to understand why anyone would chose to become a teaching artist.

Surapsari sometimes rewards students with a sticker to use as a "bindi" on their foreheads. " “It’s not a fashion statement,”  she tells them. “It means we were all born with wisdom.” / Staff photo by Dan Wagner

Surapsari sometimes rewards students with a sticker to use as a "bindi" on their foreheads. " “It’s not a fashion statement,” she tells them. “It means we were all born with wisdom.”
/ Staff photo by Dan Wagner

But Surapsari has known a different life, one that offered stability and luxury and predictability, and it is not the life she has in mind for herself now.

"I used to work for a multinational corporation in Tokyo and then in Los Angeles," she says. "I've had major incentives like nice hotels, dinners, beauty treatments, flower bouquets. I enjoyed that for five years.

"But I've been there and I don't want to go back. I can no longer imagine going to some office and working with the same people five days a week. I love to share the beauty I know and experiences I've had with other people — especially students, because they are the future."

To learn more about:

* The Association of Florida Teaching Artists, and alliance of freelance artists offering instruction to strengthen and expand classroom curriculum,  go to: www.floridateachingartists.org

*EdExplore SRQ, which offers experiential arts learning opportunities in Sarasota Country Schools, go to: www.edexploresrq.com

*VSA Florida, which offers arts educations to individuals with disabilities, go to: www.vsafl.org

*Surapsari and the Purnama Sari Balinese Dance Company, go to: www.asiandanceandtheatre.com and www.purnamasaribali.com

 

To learn more about:

* The Association of Florida Teaching Artists, and alliance of freelance artists offering instruction to strengthen and expand classroom curriculum, go to: www.floridateachingartists.org

*EdExplore SRQ, which offers experiential arts learning opportunities in Sarasota Country Schools, go to: www.edexploresrq.com

*VSA Florida, which offers arts educations to individuals with disabilities, go to: www.vsafl.org

*Surapsari and the Purnama Sari Balinese Dance Company, go to: www.asiandanceandtheatre.com and www.purnamasaribali.com  
avatar

Carrie Seidman

Carrie Seidman has been a newspaper features writer, columnist and reviewer for 30 years...and a dancer for longer than that. She has a master's degree from Columbia University Journalism School and is a former competitive ballroom dancer. Contact her via email, or at (941) 361-4834. Make sure to "Like" Arts Sarasota on Facebook for news and reviews of the arts.
Last modified: April 20, 2015
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published without permissions. Links are encouraged.