At 19, Chris­t­ian Ro­hit Samuel is al­ready mov­ing be­tween two worlds—com­put­er sci­ence and the per­form­ing arts.

A first-year Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dent, the for­mer Vale­dic­to­ri­an of Cou­va East Sec­ondary School has de­vel­oped a par­al­lel life in Bharatanatyam, Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic and the­atre.

That jour­ney was cel­e­brat­ed on Ju­ly 19 when the Samaaga­ma Foun­da­tion, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Ker­ry and Sav­it­ri Samuel, pre­sent­ed Praramb­ham, mean­ing The Be­gin­ning, a so­lo Bharatanatyam recital by Chris­t­ian at the Bis­ram Gopee Au­di­to­ri­um, Di­vali Na­gar.

His con­nec­tion with In­di­an cul­ture be­gan in child­hood, when his cu­rios­i­ty about his her­itage led him to par­tic­i­pate in Baal Vikaas com­pe­ti­tions at McBean Hin­du School.

At sev­en, he be­gan for­mal Bharatanatyam train­ing at the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion un­der Shri­mati Aar­ti Natu. He lat­er trained with sev­er­al re­spect­ed teach­ers and now stud­ies un­der Gu­ru Sri Al­lan Rudesh Sama­roo at the Samaaga­ma Foun­da­tion.

Dance has tak­en him in­to the­atre and na­tion­al pro­duc­tions, in­clud­ing Shakun­ta­la, Omkara, The In­ner Child, This Is Us, the Na­tion­al Day of Prayer, As­pire, Ja­gran, Kal Aaj Aur Kaal and Chan­dra­mukhi.

His artis­tic in­ter­ests al­so ex­tend to mu­sic. Chris­t­ian stud­ies Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic with Shri­mati Man­daki­ni Swain of In­dia and re­ceives vo­cal coach­ing from the Vanes­sa Brig­gs Vo­cad­e­my.

He is al­so in­volved with Dat­ta Kir­tan Man­dali, ISHA Kir­tan Aacharyas, the UWI Spir­it Team, UWI Hin­du So­ci­ety and UWI In­di­an Cul­tur­al So­ci­ety.

For Chris­t­ian, Praramb­ham was more than an­oth­er per­for­mance. It marked an­oth­er stage in a jour­ney that be­gan with a child’s cu­rios­i­ty about his her­itage and has grown in­to a com­mit­ment to keep­ing those tra­di­tions alive.