:: July/August 2006 Volume 5/Number 5

Special Section:

Yoga of Dance
The Meaning Behind the Movements

By Felicia M. Tomasko

 

Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo, Maheshwara Guru Saakshat para Brahma, Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha

I bow to the teacher, who like Brahma creates knowledge, like Vishnu maintains intelligence, and like Shiva destroys ignorance and is the abode of ultimate realization.

Classical Indian dance, in all of its forms, is prayer personified: through intricately embroidered costume, henna ceremoniously decorating dancers’ feet, gestures that tell epic stories and invoke heroes, demons and gods, and the dancers’ skill in personifying the transcendent. To fully embody prayer before she dances, Meera Varma recites the above invocation in Sanskrit to honor her teachers, to honor Shiva and to honor the divine. This is because Indian dance, in all of its forms from classical to modern, is devotional at its heart and root. Its origins are mantric, prayer made physical.

Indian classical dance is performed in India and throughout the world, from temples to stages, but its choreography, imagery and intention have infused street dancing and movie sequences. Varma teaches Indian styles of dance in India and in studios and stages worldwide. Students are getting their groove on Bollywood-style, inspired by the world’s most prolific film industry. Even hip-hop has its origins in devotion, its practice the conscious or unconscious intention of union.
Nataraj is the Lord of the Dance, the iconic, blissful form of the Shiva who is the Vedic destroyer deity. Shiva not only delivered divine dance, he also gifted the teaching of yoga to mankind. Statues of Nataraj abound in temples and the image is one of the most widespread in Hindu art: Shiva poised in the midst of waving his multiple arms, immersed in the cosmic dance, a union simultaneously personal and universal. It is said that Shiva’s supernatural ability to control his body and mind emanates from his yoga practice - and his dance. Thus, at their very divine origins, classical Indian thought, yoga and dance are inexorably linked.

Yoga and dance share similarities in form and posture, but they are unified in their intention of union of participant and audience with the divine. While all art, some could argue, has an aspect of the spiritual, there is something much more tangible found in Indian classical dance that is a direct route to the sacred. “It is more consciously understood in Indian dance,” said dancer Radha Carmen, who has been studying Indian classical dance for nearly 30 years. This is not unique to India; according to former professional dancer and yoga teacher Ghauri Brienda, this intention is shared among indigenous forms worldwide.

Forms of Indian Classical Dance
Just like the music and mayhem of the continent herself, Indian dance takes many and varied forms. Some are more well-known than others outside of their home areas, and although we may not remember their names, we have seen their images. Although by no means an exhaustive or complete list of Indian dance, eight classical forms are officially recognized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the Indian Academy of Music, Dance and Drama: Bharatanatyam from Tamil Nadu, Odissi (or Orissi) from Orissa, Kathak from Uttarpradesh, Kathakali and Mohiniattam from Kerala, Manipuri from the north-eastern state of Manipur, Sattriva from Assam and Kuchipudi from the southern Andhra Pradesh.

Although different, all the forms share an aesthetic that dance is not merely the expression of the body, form or technique, as compared to dance traditions like Western ballet.

While sometimes movement evokes devotion and story, the meaning behind the movement often comes through actually portraying the characters from the Indian epics. By donning the blue makeup of the divine lover Krishna, or painting oneself in demonic hues, a dancer embodies an aspect of the transcendent inner self. Dancers in many forms tell an entire story, shifting personality just with an arch of the eyebrow, or a narrowing of expressive eyes.

Bharatanatyam may be one of the most well-known dance forms and its silken, statuesque, linear choreography features dancers adorned with henna. Their hands exquisitely gesture playfulness, love, devotion or provide the thread of a story. Odissi may be even older than bharatanatyam, and is danced by both women and men dressed as women. There is more curvature and undulation of the torso in Odissi, and more seated or squatting postures are incorporated. Kathak is defined by the rhythm percussed by the dancers’ feet, ankles encircled with bells. Their bodies create music and dance.

From Kerala, Mohininattam is frequently danced by women, in simple, often white dress. Its lyrical form frequently tells the story of the search for amrita, the nectar of the gods, and the effort of the gods to prevent the demons from imbibing. Kathakali is most often danced by men and is more theater incorporating dance than pure dance. The made-up melodramatic Kathakali dancers portray individual characters through costume and choreography and interact with each other on stage, in contrast to most of the other dance forms in which the dancer portrays the entire story.

Manipuri includes several devotional dance forms, all centrally intertwined with the North Indian music of the region; sound and image are interlinked. Sattriya was originally danced by monks, as devotion, to ragas (traditional melodic compositions). Kuchipudi began as a village dance, before moving to the stage; it is both lyrical and dramatic.

Many of these boast origins as ancient as the practice of yoga itself, with richly textured written treatises. The dance of Bharatanatyam, for example, has its roots in the more than 2,000-year-old text the Natya Shastra, thought to be the world’s oldest written work on dance, drama and art. The dance is passed on, from teacher to student, in an intensely disciplined apprentice/guru-student relationship, similar to yoga teaching, called the Guru Shishya Parampara.

Dance and Yoga
In the linkages, the partnering between yoga and dance, there is a connection with hatha yoga, the aspects of the sun (ha) and moon (tha). Bharatanatyam dancer Sheeta Menon feels this intimately. Menon begins her practice with sun salutations, as well as earth salutations, asking for the Earth’s blessings before she dances on her surface. The movements of Bharatanatyam, Menon says, embody the sun and moon even in one person, as the dancer’s lower body is firm, studied, confident and firm - the masculine sun aspect, while she says the upper body is supple like a flower, evoking the feminine moon. The costuming, jewelry and henna designs worn by a Bharatanatyam dancer strategically symbolize the chakras, the energetic body overlaid and intertwined with the physical.

Meera Varma began her journey into dance with kathak, accompanied by her father’s tabla. The tabla is the drum that resonates in the traditional duet with the kathak dancer’s rhythmic feet. From kathak, Meera branched out to dance Bharatanatyam as well as many of what she describes as folk and modern forms, such as the North Indian hip-hop bhangra and has even choreographed and performed the lavish dance sequences in the thriving Bollywood film industry. But she feels bhakti, or the yoga of devotion is central to them all.

Through surrendering into the dance, expressing love of the divine, Meera finds it brings her as a dancer to the point of immersion, of losing the self, as authentic devotion is meant to do. “I lose myself in the inner body, get in touch with my inner Self and lose connection to the ego.” Through immersion in form as well as telling the divine stories, the lover and beloved merge.

Dancers lead the spectators through jnana yoga, the path of knowledge, via storytelling. Although the facial expressions, body language and hand gestures provide a form of entertainment to the audience, there is more, particularly when portraying sacred epics. As award-winning dancer and choreographer Malathi Iyengar says, “In the long run, [the stories] give us refinement for our own living.” The epic of the Ramayana is one text from which stories are frequently performed, which is the story of the Ram, an incarnation of the preserver god Vishnu and his trials and tribulations in losing and regaining a kingdom, and his wife Sita from the demon Ravana. Through dance, Iyengar says, we view “the story of Rama and Ravana, and wonder how do we translate to our daily life, how do we win evil over good with goodness itself, and translate spirituality and devotion?” Through being dance and watching dance, we seek knowledge.

Like the yogi, the dancer participates in a private spiritual journey, but on stage, they include with the audience, allowing viewers to be swept along on the transformative ride. It is one thing to hear or read the epics, and quite another to see them in all their resplendence. While those of us who practice yoga may be familiar with finding union through linking breath with the movement of the body in a sun salutation, glimpsing the divine via a drishti point like the navel in downward facing dog or chanting om with resonance at the completion of an extended relaxation, Indian classical - and modern dance - offers yet another route on which to tread the spiritual path.

 

A former dancer, Felicia M. Tomasko is a yoga teacher, Ayurvedic practitioner and writer based in Santa Barbara, California, where she also writes frequently about dance and the arts.

 

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