To fade away...a 95 year old dancer

One can only hope that at 95 you can still teach, dance, and touch people's souls! I hope to fade away just as she says...still working hard, enjoying life, and devoting time to teaching:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/at-95-therrell-smith-has-an-enduring-passion-and-love-for-dance/2012/11/22/8f6c3a26-33fa-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_story_1.html

Inspiring bharatanatyam and a new direction

I've often complained about how I find the choreography for many bharatanatyam works uninspiring. This may be because it's my forte, so I've watched a lot and thus relatively am more impressed by kuchipudi works I see or odissi works I see than bharatnatyam.

But, there were two works I recently came across and just loved.

This one, the choreography is just...really well executed and so pleasing aesthetically. The movements really push traditional ideas of bharatanatyam adavus in a very traditionally-themed bhakti driven piece like the Dashavatara.



Another one is Dakshina Vaidyanathan's choreography. I love the new movements and the theme - nakshatras - so different and more relatable for the everyday person! It seems many of the movements are given their form by a low, almost kalaripayattu like stance. It's weight shifting from posture to posture reminds me of the feeling and visual elements that kalari offers.


But the more I watch, the more I feel so much of it is inspired by Nrityagram. The way half of the group will do a movement in the opposite direction of the other half, then suddenly flow together, then the body movements remaining the same but the hand movements differing for a different layered texture of movement.

Or maybe it is inspired by what inspired Nrityagram - a collective movement that new choreographers are offering viewers.

Whatever the case may be, I feel it only bodes well for the field of classical dance!

Thoughts on the Nandikesvara Abhinayadarpanam by Manmohan Ghosh

My first thought: Is the abhinaya darpana only this long?

My second thought: wow, there are a lot of typos (ie, in the pataka hasta viniyoga, there is one translation that says “might” instead of “night”).

My third thought: Manmohan Ghosh has a clear bias towards thinking that Indian classical dance is truly 2,000 some odd years old and his introduction reflects that. But can’t see how the actual translation reflects that since it’s prescriptive/descriptive.

My fourth thought: This is amazing. But, why are there some seemingly arbitrary (though I’d like to research why) paragraphs – ie, “women with white specks in their eyeballs” are disqualified from practicing the art, and why in the stances there is no tiger walk, but there is a lion walk…

Interestingly enough, Ghosh comments that the Natyashastra and Abhinaya Darpana do NOT always line up, even in simple things like how many hastas there are. This is just a general statement to be probed further, but I believe that the comparisons of these two texts hold a key to understanding the further development and evolution of dance forms in India.

Nrityagram: A globalized dance form

If it is not clear yet, I consider myself to be a dancer, with a forte in bharatanatyam. It is how I communicate; it is how I live; it is how I breathe. I am in many senses nothing without it.

And as an Indian classical dancer, where mentors/gurus are your source to continual improvement, and myself with no official teacher training me at the moment, it has been difficult. For six years I have floundered looking for someone  - sometimes, anyone - who would want to take on a dancer who wanted intensive training. Sadly, I came up short. Until I took Nrityagram’s month long summer workshop.

It is an incredible experience to find a teacher at this age who is actually interested in developing professional level students whether they are trained or untrained in the style. Most teachers in the Indian classical dance field will write you off if you haven’t been with them for years and years, and several more will show favoritism to the talented. Not so at Nrityagram, where the philosophy emphasizes dedication and passion leading a student towards carefully guided professional development.

Best of all is that the dance company remains firmly routed in the traditions of Indian classical dance, while creating constant evolution within the form.  The result is an ever-developing globalized art form. Though Nrityagram once had, and perhaps will again, house other styles of dance, as of right now many of us associate them with a deep commitment to the odissi form and ethos.  But the style here does not quite emphasize preservation or even simply working with only the vocabulary that has been passed down to them…it is one that has absorbed the techniques, stability, and graces of many other genres of dance while adapting it to the art form. Never before have I seen so many influences from dance around the world yet found it to remain firmly entrenched within the curvaceous feel of odissi. And to me, this is what makes Nrityagram so inspiring. They keep pushing the form forward.

At Nrityagram’s village, which is like a mini-college complete with dorms and several areas to practice, is a quiet air of constant learning, absorbing, and imbibing, even amongst the teachers. It is a place that makes almost everyone who comes want to quit everything and stay here, even with the lizards that hide behind your mirror and after you’ve killed your twentieth cockroach in the bathroom. And this is not because the style of dance, or the incredibly beautiful dancers, (though these are a product of the atmosphere) but because of the inspiration and knowledge that the teachers impart. After learning at Nrityagram, it’s difficult to imagine learning from anyone else or any other way.  It’s an experience you hope you can consistently come back to, magnificent in its simplicity, humbling, and utterly enthralling.

I wish, in some senses, I had found Nrityagram 5 years ago, when I had first embarked on my permanent journey into the dance field. I would have happily tried out for their residential program then, and with a little luck may now consider odissi to be my forte rather than bharatanatyam.

In other senses, it was the perfect timing for me. It is a time when I feel I can truly appreciate and apply the perspective and criticisms of accomplished artists such as Bijayini Satpathy/Surupa Sen/Pavithra Reddy, without tons of ego (at least in relation to 5 years back), and with some of the carefully developed awareness of the body that I didn’t have when I was 21 – and took being a little lost as a dancer – to find.

And just like learning, there is no conclusion here, only hope that I can continue onwards and upwards.

Kathak Evolution

I found this video downright fascinating. There are some incredible uses of kathak in there (like the spins that use tatkar of both feet at the same time) that I haven't seen in quite some time...

Useful Information on Copyrights for Dancers

http://www.danceheritage.org/publications/copyright.html

They have a downloadable pdf version as well.

The shrinking circle of Indian classical dance lovers

I had a long conversation with a friend yesterday as to why we thought Indian classical dance doesn't have the same viewership - or importance - as 50, 200, 1,000 years ago.

There are a few, obvious reasons which I've stated before:

1. The fact that Indian classical dance and music is no longer tied into the nationalist movement.

2. Globalization and the film industry - the Shakiras and the Beyonces are the new Shakespeares and Thyagarajas. I have no comment on this because I don't have the perspective of history analyzing their work, and certainly some of it is very smart, but there's no denying the statistics.

Then there are less obvious, but incredibly (in my opinion) damaging issues:

3. The allocation of Indian classical dance and music for only an educated sub-sect of people, or only Indians. When we forget that we're dancing for more than just people who like Indian classical dance, and that that number is diminishing because we're competing with the above forces, we make it really difficult for people to choose us on a Friday night instead of...well...anything else. I think this is changing dramatically, at least in the US, but definitely between the 70's to the 90's - and even perhaps up to just a few years back - this was the case.

4. Preservation. We're so stuck on preserving certain ideals and certain ways of doing things that we suffocate, close off, and strangle the art form. And, like Woody Allen says about relationships, art is like a shark. If it doesn't keep moving, it dies. I can't understand why a patron in India would oppose a kick that reaches a full split because it doesn't seem "bharatanatyam" enough. Have you seen the sculptures in the temples? They are doing things we have not achieved yet!

5. A lack of knowledge or unwillingness to push the body and the adavus. Bharatnatyam, odissi, etc is more than just how low you can sit in aramande or the chauka. Every part should get detail work, we need to be working with physicists, kinesthesiology, etc, to see where we can go further with it. It cannot stop with just the adavus. One of the reasons (other than sheer numbers of people they need for just one show, which can definitely play into it) ballet and contemporary does so well is because the body does things that you just sit there and go..."Wow" too. It's not necessarily just about the flow, the theme, the art. Again, for me, now this is changing. But maybe 20-30 years before 2000 this wasn't happening.

6. Politics. Why has it taken us SO long to join forces? Who cares what the other person is doing? Yes, quality is important, protecting your work is important, but egos need to be set aside. The generation of artists I have been working with are amazing, but I am sometimes still in the middle of - and hear things - that just shock me. This field is difficult enough without other dancers trying to upend other efforts. Work on yourself and your work, spread your message, the fact of the matter is, if one person does really well, they merely bring others to start watching.

And if you are so concerned about quality: once you do watch something great, it's hard to go back to something not so great.