-A Review by Vaishnavi Rao

Malaysian dancer and choreographer, Ramli Ibrahim, has become one of Malaysia’s most internationally acclaimed artists. A Muslim who is an ardent practitioner of both Bharatanatyam and Odissi, Ramli's creativity is an integrated experience transcending national, religious and racial boundaries.

From an early age, Ramli knew he wanted to become a dancer. As a young cadet at the Royal Military College in Malaysia in 1970, Ramli won an engineering scholarship and was the first of the bumiputras-indigenous Malaysians-to be sent abroad. Earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Western Australia provided him with the unique opportunity to pursue his education while simultaneously developing his innate talent for dance.

Breaking the traditional conventions of both, gender and religion, Ibrahim  trained in classical ballet, modern dance and Indian classical dance but it was only after his first trip to India, to the city of Puri in Orissa that he became mesmerised by the ancient dance form of Odissi. This journey affected him to the core. He got a scholarship from Australia to do a year’s study of this exciting dance form that was being rediscovered after centuries of obscurity. There was no looking back.

As soon as Ramli graduated, he auditioned for the Australian Ballet School, Melbourne. He was the only one from the whole of Western Australia accepted. "It was the best thing I ever did", Ramli says. "Two years in the Diploma course  just focussed full time on dance and nothing else".

He became a member of the Australian Ballet, and was subsequently picked by celebrated choreographer Graeme Murphy to play Nijinsky, which led to him becoming a founding member of the Sydney Dance Company in 1977.
While performing with the Sydney Dance Theatre, he continued to immerse himself in Indian classical dance and made frequent trips to India to study with some of the great dancers. When Ramli performs, he has been likened to a Hindu god, compared to the legendary Ram Gopal in his heydays: reposeful, resplendent and regal. Today, no other foreign, male or female dancer of Indian classical styles is as renowned and brilliant as Ramli.

After spending 14 years in Australia, performing and studying dance around the world, Ramli made in his words, his "Malaysian debut performance" in1982 to an audience of more than a thousand people. The following year, he established SUTRA Dance Theatre and choreographed his first contemporary Malaysian work, "Gerhana".

SUTRA Dance Theatre initially began as a platform to showcase Ramli’s own productions and has since grown into the training ground for young Malaysian dancers. It is also a vehicle to promote public awareness of traditional, classical and contemporary dance. By challenging and pushing the limits of dance in Malaysia, Ramli continues to instill in his students his quest for artistic freedom and creativity.

"I want to see dance with a capital D", says Ramli.

Ramli was awarded  the Fulbright Distinguished Artist Award in 1999. He was recently in Mumbai to present "Spellbound" at NCPA with a group of seven dancers. "When I saw his work in his academy, ‘the Sutra Dance Theatre’, I was spellbound. I was always shy of the thought of a foreign artist performing Indian classical dance in India, but he shows so much energy and a sense of aesthetics that I was convinced," said Mrs Mehta, director of NCPA.