Oriental Dance and Indian influences

I have found myself recently involved in several long discussions pertaining to "fusion". As someone who is constantly experimenting with forms, this is a daily dialogue, but found a video that really stopped me in my tracks:

 

I am very generally not a proponent of the word "fusion" let alone a mixing like this. So, I leave it to you: watch, comment, what do you think?

Where is fusion appropriate and where is not? How do we define the limits of experimentation? What responsibilities do we have to the form as we learn it?

Awesome advertising: "I will what I want"

There is something amazing about the words "I will what I want" - sheer force of will resulting in the actions necessary to get yourself where you want to go - so this new Under Armour campaign is incredible.

It is inspirational, and dead on target. Under Armour has used storytelling with a message at it's best - and it honestly made me research more about the company, the campaign, their website for a solid hour. Job well done, marketers.

It has also made me jump right onto the Misty Copeland bus - the incredible extension and amazing lines she has makes her fame well deserved. You go girl!

Or, perhaps I should say: You will girl!




I've also included the other commercials because they made me want to go search my house for overweight suitcases and run around in the front yard with them.

No words. This is the kind of piece where everything is absolutely necessary: the lights, the stage, the props. Blown away.

Keone Madrid: just genius. (I know it's a group choreography but I am guessing he had a hand).

Pushing artists out of urban settings

We know, we know: New York City (and other urban environments) are becoming harder and harder to live in and create in as an artist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/arts/design/rising-rents-leave-new-york-artists-out-in-the-cold.html?_r=1

http://observer.com/2014/03/the-last-frontier-artists-worry-theyve-run-of-neighborhoods-to-be-priced-out-of/

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/arts/report-says-artists-arrival-can-push-out-neighbors.html

It begs the question: what does a city which prides itself on art and culture become when it more or less forces every artist who is "based" in Manhattan to live outside of Manhattan and commute in? Is it truly even a city of art and culture anymore? Or just a space for artists to collect and disperse from? A commodity that is bought and viewed here and doesn't truly exist here?

Which is even sadder because it is such a huge part of our GDP: http://arts.gov/news/2013/us-bureau-economic-analysis-and-national-endowment-arts-release-preliminary-report-impact

But that's a post for another day.

Start off the New Year with Classical Music and Non-Classical Dance

This is where well thought out creation between musicians and dancers of genres who never normally cross paths can lead to some mind blowing work. We are starting to see some truly amazing stuff - far from the days of poor dancing and lack of musicality from choreographers (of absolutely any genre - classical or not, world music or not) -

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.

Female aesthetics in Indian classical dance

I have to say, there is one major thing that disappoints me about Indian classical dance today - our obsession with the body being "skinny".

I am definitely culprit of it myself, and our discussions of what we should or shouldn't eat, or how much we would like to reduce our weight has overtaken our daily dance rehearsals.

Why???

I put my foot down this week, and banned us from discussing our bodies, and even then, I still spoke about it once or twice. We are not lazy dancers, We pushing our bodies to the limit in rehearsal 3 hours everyday, 5 days a week. When performances come up, we do double rehearsals twice a day. We are strong, we are flexible, but we are not size zeros, and somehow, this bothers us.

More and more, India is looking west to take on ideals of the body that we have here. I hear major artists talk about how many "thin is in, fat is out" and dancers need to reduce weight to carry themselves on stage.

I just don't believe this to be true. Dancers have to be strong and beautiful. And that can come in many shapes. Yes, overweight is not good, and aesthetics are part of the game since dance is a visual form, but my heart breaks when I see dancers who are size fours and sixes eat two chappatis a night after 6 hours of rehearsal and obsess over themselves to have the body of the 15 year old sitting next to us.

When did we become like this? Oh, right, because of this:


And this:



And this:



We are proud, beautiful, Indian women with curves.

Don't let media moguls suggest otherwise.