Video number 2: Dolphin from Navatman Dance

Check it out, folks.



As an update, our social media enterprise is working pretty well, particularly YouTube. At this point, we've attempted putting up 1 minute clips of events we have done, either via Navatman Productions or Navatman Dance. We are utilizing commercials to clarify what and who we are, and try to keep it short or funky and quirky enough to hold your interest.

I love what we've been doing and we've upped our YouTube views to 15,000 total over 10 or so public videos we have as part of our channel using simple raw iPhone videos.

I'm excited to see where we go from here - we'll be next utilizing (slightly) more professional equipment for properly shot, well lit videos and it would be great to see how that ups the level at which people pay attention to what we're doing.

Indian classical music videos and compositions? Yes, yes, and yes!

As part of Drive East in 2013, we worked with IndianRaga on their fellowship concept. Once the decision to bring them on board was made, Navatman and IndianRaga took a close look at what they were doing. And we thought, if we're going to invest so much money, why not take a huge risk and do something we want to do?

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to encourage compositions exactly like this and make classical music videos. Harnessing the power of visuals and recording studios, Indian classical music gets to rope certain resources that it has long kept at bay for reasons I can't quite understand.

Regardless, here are the three videos we worked to create, and for once, I wasn't the lead on this project! A huge shoutout to Sriram Emani for making it happen. And yes, the director is my forever favorite Jesse Newman.

Hip Hop and Indian Classical Dance

This entire post was sparked by the incredible urban dance artist Brian Puspos and this video:



The first time I watched it, it brought me close to tears. There was something about the way he interpreted the lyrics, his deep emotions, and close relationship with the rhythm that made this pop.

And then it struck me...this is abhinaya at its best! What am I doing thinking of abhinaya as an esoteric medium restricted to be within the definition of Indian classical dance???

He has a word to word meaning - choosing the most important parts of the sentence to describe to the audience. He uses hastas - grabbing, catching, showing his heart. His facial muscles show anguish, pain, resolution, happiness, and all in a dance like manner. What else is abhinaya if not that?

This got me watching more and more hip hop videos. And then, I realized, bharatanatyam has something to learn from hip hop. We often think we are difficult to understand, follow, etc - but then you watch hip hop and it's much the same. Hip hop's positions - bent knees and arms - are enormously grounded and rhythmical. Its movements isolate arms, legs, torso head, eyes, in similar ways to bharatanatyam.  Spatially it often keeps to one spot, just as Indian classical dance does. It's not about flexibility, turns, or leaps. It has an intense geometry.

I could have just described Indian classical dance's most important values in the last few sentences. So maybe us artists can get a kick of inspiration, intensity, and a different viewpoint all together by realizing that we are more than our history...we are less esoteric, less different, less "other" than we think these days.

Dance and Animation!

So I may have been doing dance/video pieces, but this guy has done a dance/video/animation piece.

Awesome.

http://vimeo.com/14803194

The Nayika Reversal

Set to Aankhon Mein Tu Hai by Penn Masala.
Danced by Aishwarya Iyer, Sindhu Sundar, and myself.
Description: In this wonderful twist on the traditional padam, the dancers play men who can't seem to catch the attention of the women they adore.


The concept here was to really utilize the medium of film to explain the story line in a less stylized and more accessible manner. We'll see how that flies.


And, just to give a little credit to my dancers - we had to dance on twigs and stones in the dappled-sunlight tree scenes.  Never doing that again.


Enjoy!

Outside my Box

Who says bharatanatyam dancers cant go outside their sphere?

Directed by Jesse Newman, composed by Elizabeth Claire Burke, featuring Mark O'Connor, and choreographed by me and Ali Schechter!

Enjoy!

Movie I must, must see

No,it's not Step Up 3-D, though I really should go see that. I'm convinced that 3-D dancing is going to change the dance scene in much the way that CD's changed music.

Shameless self promotion...

After months of agonizing and re-editing and searching and stalking of various persons, Jesse and I finally completed Art Is...

And then promptly lost our re visioned copy in a massive hard drive crash. Since I have no idea if the completed version will ever be recovered by this data recovery company, I am putting up our first version of this video. The music too will be available on iTunes soon! Yay!

For those of you who are interested in the process, about a year ago I wrote a poem I entitled "Art Is..." during a time when I was searching for reasons as to why I had fully entered the dance world. I decided to make it a film piece and translate the poem into solo movement and then re-translate it with "subtitles" on the film. And because I felt it was a universal thing for a dancer to struggle with why they dance full time and reason it all out within a studio, I wanted to utilize the film in such a way that it was 3 distinct solos proclaiming the same idea to the world. A few month's later I came across Liz's song, but wanting a more global feel, we asked Arun to join her on the record. Six months later I got the recording. And for two weeks while I was in India last year, I stalked a street artist and filmed him doing his job in front of the Mylapore temple. (I think it was Mylapore). Finally, in January, we filmed the dancers at the Sukha Yoga studio and Madison Square Park and premiered it at Navatman's one year anniversary. So this simple, six minute piece took about a year and a half to complete.

I hope you enjoy it!

Yet Another Clip Showing The Power of Dance

Whether it was the medicine that cured her or if there was significant physical help from the dance itself is always a point to ponder but what you cannot question is that it was the focus and positivity she brought to herself through dance that gave her emotional stability:

A beautiful, inspiring story that was brought to my eyes by a member of the NYC Dance Community