Neila Sathyalingam

The second of four daughters of a well-to-do dental surgeon and a housewife, Neila Balendra was born in 1938 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). She began dancing at the age of five, and trained in the classical Indian dance traditions of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali and Manipuri at the Shanti Kumar School of Dance and the Kalaya School of Dance in Colombo. In 1954, she won the gold medal at the All-Ceylon Dance Festival and was selected to perform for Elizabeth II when the Queen visited Sri Lanka in April 1954 during her tour of the Commonwealth after acceding to the throne. Neila has said: "That was the day I decided I was going to devote my life to dance. My father wanted me to become a dental surgeon, but I refused". She lived a regimented lifestyle, living in a thatched house with "snakes above and rats running below" and waking at 4:30am for dance practice every day. She completed her five-year course in two years, at Kalakshetra. The son of a Sri Lankan politician, C. Suntharalingam, he had graduated from the University of Madras with a Sangitha Sironmani (Degree in Music) and from Kalakshetra in 1955 with a Diploma in Music, and was then teaching Indian classical music theory and the playing of the Indian drum and cymbals at the academy. After a two-year courtship, they married in 1956 and moved back to Sri Lanka where they lived in a 40-ha farm just outside Colombo. Sathyalingam then taught dance in schools while raising her children, the first of whom was born in 1957. In May 1958, riots broke out in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Although the Sathyalingams received a tip-off that they had been targeted and managed to escape the violence, 80 Sinhalese rioters attacked and burned their home. Having lost their abode and all their possessions, they resettled in Colombo. In 1969 Neila returned to Kalakshetra to be trained as an instructor and to take up a postgraduate diploma course. She graduated in 1972 with a distinction and was appointed a dance teacher with Kalakshetra. ==Career in Singapore==

In 1974, Neila moved to Singapore after American company Uniroyal Chemicals, for which her husband worked as an area sales manager, was posted there. Indonesia and Vietnam. Apsaras Arts, now based at the Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre, took part in numerous arts and dance festivals worldwide, including the Asean Festival in Malaysia (1983); the Australian Youth Musical Festival (August 1983); the Hong Kong Arts Festival (1990); the World of Music, Arts and Dance (Womad) Festival in Singapore (2002); the 17th National Cultural Festival in Nong Khai, Thailand (2003); and the Indian Festival of Arts in Singapore (2003). She was also an artistic adviser to the National Arts Council. with the Viswa Kala Bharathi, an award given to non-resident Indian artistes who have helped to propagate Indian arts in foreign lands, for her artistic contributions throughout the world. Up to 2007, Neila had also choreographed dance segments for the last 13 Chingay Parades, which are street parades held annually in Singapore as part of Chinese New Year festivities. On 14 and 15 September 2007, Neila staged at the Victoria Theatre what has been termed her "last mega-production", an Indian epic dance drama called Sivagami written by Kalki Krishnamurthy (1899–1954), which involved 65 dancers from Apsaras Arts and from India. Thereafter, she has said that she intended to "slow down" by focusing on her teaching, although she has remarked: "There is really no such thing called a swan song, and I won't like to keep still after being so active. ... I will keep dancing as long as my body will say yes to me". ==Personal life==

Neila and her husband, Sathyalingam, had three daughters and a son. Of her daughters, her eldest, Mohana (born 1957), sings for Apsaras Arts' performances; while Nandana (born 1960), runs an Indian performing arts school also called Apsaras Arts in Canberra, Australia. Her daughter, Shaan (born 1962) is a legal adviser for the National Library Board of Singapore. Her younger son Skanda (born 1963) contracted encephalitis at six months and became severely mentally and physically disabled. ==Notes==