Source: Nepa News
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10248413&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept
On October 1, 2003 Nepa News profiled Trisha Mukherjee, a 14-year old performer of "bharathanatya arangetram," a classical dance that evolved in India more than 2,000 years ago. Mukherjee is just one "among the dozens of girls of Indian descent who are studying the dance as a way to preserve their heritage in the Lehigh Valley's tiny Indian community. The dance often tells the stories of Hindu gods, epic tales students would have absorbed like nursery rhymes if they grew up in India... The successful blend of Western and Indian traditions was the hope of a group of eight mothers 13 years ago, when they lobbied a professional Indian dancer and teacher to commute 80 miles from New Jersey to teach the dance at the temple run by the Hindu Temple Society."