SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, December 9, 2007: On November 3, 2007, San Francisco Odissi dancer Asako Takami passed away after a four-year battle with ovarian cancer.
Takami was born in Nigata, Japan, and became involved in Odissi dance at the age of 20. She was a college student studying art and Japanese design when she was first exposed to Indian dance. At that time she began studying Kathakali and Manipuri, two of India’s classical dance forms. Later she saw a performance in Tokyo by legendary Odissi dancer Sanjukta Panigrahi and was profoundly moved by the performance. She told Hinduism Today in 2000, “I was very shocked that one human body can change the space and energy. I didn’t think I could do that with my body, but I wanted to. Right after this performance, I met my teacher, KumKum Lal, who was visiting Japan from India. I went to her place and said I wanted to study Odissi. She just started teaching in her kitchen. That’s how I began in 1983.” For seventeen years, Takami traveled to India for several months at a time, training with KumKum Lal in Delhi, and with Lal’s teacher, Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, in Orissa, the home of Odissi dance. Takami is the founder and artistic director of the East Bay-based Pallavi Dance Group.
Of her experience with Odissi, Asako once said, “For me dancing, performing and teaching Odissi dance is a form communication, a tool of connecting with people and with my deeper self. This dance form nourishes and cultivates my personal life and from that I deepen my practice. She is survived by her parents, her sister, and her partner Ralph Lemon, as well as an international community of friends, students and people she has inspired.
You can read her interview to Hinduism Today Magazine here.