Child Prodigies

I genuinely don't know how I feel about this group of children, for several reasons.

1. The choreographer has moved odissi for these gotipua children from dance into spectacle. It is not about creating rasa but eliciting cheers. I can't fault him for that, all dance needs a little spectacle to keep the audience from drooping, but this was mostly cheerleading stunts and gymnastics and splits and didn't quite float my boat. Though it kept me staring at the screen in a mixture of fascination and horror.

2. Why in horror, do you ask? This kind of odd coordination and flexibility out of such small children makes me wonder how they get that out of them at such a young age. I know people want to help their kids become great, but I always wonder how far we are pushing it. I only comment on this after a series of bharatanatyam videos I saw of great and very, very small children. And knowing that often (I have no idea about this particular case) children are broken and re-molded to create beauty like this at a young age.

I only bring this up because I don't think people give a second thought to what it might take to bring them the entertainment they love so much.