“Dance is the artwork of motion, and subsequently something that’s shifting, respiration, rising, or feeling is a part of the dance,” says Vija Vetra, a 101-year-old Latvian-born dancer, choreographer, instructor, and lecturer who first earned acclaim as an Indian classical and trendy dancer within the mid-Twentieth century. Vetra’s ardour for her artwork has taken her world wide, and it’s simply solely just lately that she’s begun to decelerate.
Born in Riga on February 6, 1923, Vetra remembers seeing a efficiency of Swan Lake at age 5 and immediately falling in love. At 16, she left residence to coach on the Vienna Academy (now the College of Music and Performing Arts Vienna), the place her instructors included trendy dance legend Rosalia Chladek. In Vienna, Vetra studied ballet, trendy, and numerous character-dance kinds, in addition to music, anatomy, and psychology.
World Struggle II compelled Vetra to depart Austria. As a result of Latvia was now occupied territory, Vetra spent a number of years as a warfare refugee. She ultimately immigrated to Australia, the place she joined Bodenwieser Ballet, underneath the path of recent dancer and choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser (a fellow émigré from Europe). Vetra later struck out on her personal as an impartial performer and opened her personal faculty. She additionally danced in lots of Australian theater productions and even had her personal tv program, “Music and Dance,” in 1959.
It was by theater that Vetra encountered the dance fashion that might develop into her lifelong ardour. “A director requested me to create an Indian dance for a play concerning the lifetime of Buddha,” she says. “I’d by no means studied Indian dance, however I’d at all times been very considering it.” As a result of there have been no Indian classical dance masters in Australia on the time, Vetra immersed herself within the tradition’s artwork and sculptures, rigorously finding out the poses. She additionally learn the guide Indian Dancing, by Ram Gopal, a London-based performer and choreographer. “I referred to as him my ‘guru in absentia,’ ” Vetra says, including that in a full-circle second, she was later in a position to carry out with Gopal and his dance firm on tour.
Though she was self-taught, Vetra was so convincing {that a} group of Indian viewers members believed her to be from their nation and inspired her to create extra Indian dances. Quickly, the Indian embassy took an curiosity in Vetra’s work; the ambassador’s patronage led to an invite to journey to India. On what turned her first of three journeys, Vetra was lastly in a position to prepare with a guru in individual. “He was so shocked at what I already knew,” she says, “however in fact I nonetheless had a lot to study.”
As her data and expertise grew, Vetra started incorporating Indian classical dance into her personal performances. She describes her exhibits as “East meets West”—a nod to numerous Indian dignitaries’ description of Vetra herself as “a bridge between East and West.” “I began every present with dances of India,” she says, “after which moved to trendy dance, performing my very own choreography.” It was within the East, nevertheless, the place she felt most at residence: “Once I do Indian dance, I really feel that I come again to my true self.”
Whereas on a coast-to-coast tour of the U.S. and Canada in 1964, Vetra was provided a number of educating alternatives. She determined to remain within the U.S. and shortly opened her personal studio in New York Metropolis. Ever desirous to broaden her horizons, Vetra additionally skilled with Martha Graham and José Limón. “I wished to grasp American trendy dance,” she explains, “as a result of the European fashion was fairly completely different.”
Vetra continued to tour the world as a performer and choreographer. When Latvia regained its independence, she was in a position to go to residence for the primary time in many years. Beginning in 1990, she traveled there yearly to carry out and train. In 1999, she was awarded the Order of the Three Stars, Latvia’s highest civilian honor. In celebration of her one centesimal birthday in 2023, Vetra starred in a two-hour dance efficiency in Latvia. Sadly, well being considerations rendered her unable to go to in 2024.
Throughout the U.S., Vetra has been on college, taught grasp courses, and given lectures at quite a few faculties and universities. She was a member of the Dance Trainer’s Guild (now the American Dance Guild) and the now-defunct Congress on Analysis in Dance (CORD). She nonetheless teaches a weekly motion class for seniors at Westbeth Artists Housing in Manhattan’s West Village, the place she’s lived and labored since 1970.
As she approaches her 102nd birthday, Vetra hopes to be remembered not just for her illustrious stage profession but additionally for her work as an educator who helps college students uncover their distinctive creative voices. “Once I train, I at all times underline the creativity inside dance,” she says. “It’s essential for each dancer to discover a means of self-expression, fairly than squeezing into the type of another person. It’s a particular delight to look at college students growing and changing into. The act of changing into is gorgeous.”
