Refrelction

My semester has come to an end, or rather is coming to an end. I have two days left until my performance, and I feel ready. I've had class today, I have class tomorrow, and I am rehearsing with musicians tonight. We do not have our costumes made yet, and I still have to purchase bangles, but other wise, I am ready.

I have really loved studying Bharata Natyum and I cannot wait to study it this next semester. I will learn more forms and shlokas and will be able to study on my own. I hope that by the end of next semester that I will know all of the foot and hand gestures.

This semester flew by. I can so vividly remember the first days of class when I did not know any of the foot works or could not remember the hand gestures. Now when I dance, I feel really graceful and beautiful. I cannot wait to put on my costume and my ornaments and show everyone everything that I know. 

Ornaments Galore!

Today was the first time I practiced with all of my ornaments, at least all of the ones on my head and on my face. I wore three fake nose rings, ear chains, earrings, and two head pieces. At first I thought that all of these things would fall out with my first step. Mala Ji tied them around my head and secured them with bobby pins. I also started wearing my ankle bells.

Something about wearing all of the ornaments and bells makes the performance seem very really and very soon, which it is. I love feeling like an authentic Bharata Natyum dancer; I have never been allowed to wear jewelry while dancing and these pieces make me feel like I am meant to be doing this style of dance. It is very official and very traditional.

I also really love wearing the bells around my ankles. Even though they add extra weight to my ankles, they have made me step harder and more precisely. I think that I really like making noises with my feet. Tap was always my favorite kind of dance and I think my love of rhythm has followed me to India.

Alex and I have finally finished all of our routines and shlokas. We will be performing the pushpangalee, a ganesh shloka, a shloka for the gurus, the alaripoo and an adaboo combination along with two additional shlokas about the hand motions. The pushpanjalee is the presentation of flowers to the stage. All Bharata Natyum dances start with this piece. We are then performing shlokas asking for Ganesh to remove the obstacles that we could face dancing. We then thank the gurus, Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva. We then perform the Alaripoo; this is a pure dance combination. The name literally means the budding of flowers. After, I will perform a shloka on Shiva and Parvati. The next piece is the Adaboo combination. The full name is Nishtiya which means a strand of pearls; the pearls are the various smaller combinations of footwork, which are called adaboos, and they get tied together, like a necklace.

I like the combinations although sometimes they are hard to remember because there is no change in melody or rhythm of the music. In western dance classes routines are done to songs that have words and have changing patterns. The movements are prompted by words or by rhythms which makes it easier to remember. It is much harder to remember a routine when the beat is the same and the scales are sung over and over.

Doing the full routine in my ornaments made me feel like a star. I cannot wait to perform inform of my classmates so that they can see what I have been working for.    

Shopping

I love shopping in India. It is a very personal and long process and sometimes very confusing. For our performance, Alex and I met our teacher to go sari shopping. Alex and I both needed saris. His will be cut into the men’s costume.

After finding Mala Ji, which was a challenge in and of itself, we wound through the gullies until we reached a little sari shop. From there, one of the workers took us to a warehouse in other gullies. The warehouse was probably a 20ft by 20 ft square room with walls lined with fabric, saris and dotis.

Mala Ji explained that we needed cotton/synthetic saris that are solid color, and with a South Indian style contrast border. A boy, probably no older than 10, went to work pulling out sari after sari. Mala Ji made remarks like if the colors were not bright enough, the pattern too ugly, or the colors wrong or non-traditional. I ended up getting a navy, dark red and gold sari. I will bring it to a tailor with Mala Ji and it will be made into a costume. It was pretty inexpensive as far as saris go. I had to restrain myself from buying one extra for me. I was so close to it, but decided instead to save the money for a vacation to South India, where I will buy my sari.

I will still have to go and buy bells and bangles for my costume. I also will need to practice in all of my ornaments and flowers. I have had those for a while. Mala Ji bought them in South India when visiting her daughter. They are so sparkly, and even though I have no idea how to wear any of them, I have still played dress up a few times.

Watching performances

One of the most helpful things that I have done in my Bharata Natyum training is watching performances. Back in September I saw a Sanskrit play that had Bharata Natyum dancers and last week, our school had a small performance of both a Bharata Natyum dancer and a Kathak dancer.

Watching a professional up close was really inspiring and helpful. She performed many of the pieces that I will be performing. I was able to watch her footwork, her hand gestures and her facial expressions. She also performed the shlokas that I will be performing.

I know the footwork, but the hand gestures and facial expressions can be hard for me. I have never had to make my eyes and neck move along with my feet and arms. Watching the dancer was very helpful for me. She had very precise gestures, both with her face and her arms. She connected all of her movements very fluidly in a way that I have not mastered.

After seeing her perform, I was able to practice my head, neck and eye movements with more clarity of what they should look like. I stood in front of a mirror for ten or fifteen minutes working on my neck and eye movements. I realized that my neck was moving too jerkily and my eyes were not precise. I was also blinking far too often.

Mala Ji said that my expressions have been getting better. My neck is no longer out of control and I am hitting the proper angles with my eyes. I still need to work on keeping my arms high and full of energy. My arms tend to get tired from being so still, but I am working on that too. Just today, I was doing pushups to strengthen my arms, and squats and lunges to strengthen my legs, not just for dance, but also for life.

I am very happy that my gestures and eye movements are becoming clearer because we are putting them together in the form of reciting shlokas. We just learned the shlokas for the gods, Ganesh and then a specific one for Shiva and Parvaty. I really like doing the movements; in the Ganesh I have to mimic rocking a baby or in the Shiva and Parvaty shloka I get to stand like the Nataraj.

I was told that I will be learning many more shlokas and gestures next semester. I hope that by then I have the basics down pat. It will be so skilled at my eye movements. I will be able to convey so much emotion while talking to my friends, it will be great

Putting it Together

Bharata Natyum

We have started putting a routine together a routine for our final performance. It will have many parts to it. It will have an introduction where we give flowers and do a puja sort of offering to the gods. We have learned the “Alaripoo” which is an introductory combination. It is about three minutes.

It feels great to finally put together all of the steps we have learned. We have thus far really only learned individual steps and some short sequences, but not a full routine. For the past two weeks, we have learned sections and put them together for the first time on the 15^th of November. The routine is also the first time we have done many neck and eye movements with the dancing. There is a series of some very physically intensive steps that have us jumping, it feels good.

For a while it did not seem that Bharata Natyum would have the same sort of physical exhaustion that other dances I have done have. For example, I danced Bhangra for a year on a competitive team. We practiced 8 hours a week and I never left practice without having sweat. We danced for up to 9 minutes straight doing a cardio intensive dance. Other western dances were also physically exhaustive in a way that I had not yet experienced in Bharata Natyum. Putting the steps together though, I realize that it is physically intense.

Putting the steps together also made me feel very accomplished. It is always great knowing that I have completed anything in a new dance style or in a class. Seeing as Bharata Natyum was foreign to me just a few months ago, it feels good to know that I now know one full dance form that I can now do with any dancer. The traditional routines seem very standard across the board. I can now say that I know something about this old tradition. It feels great to be a part of history.

We will be working on other routines for the big performance. We also will have to sing all of the shlokas, or mantras, we know. I do not want to have to sing in public, but it will be nice demonstrating my knowledge. It has also been great having the knowledge of the hand positions and the shlokas. I practice them with my host sister who is also studying traditional dance. I also have friends in the United States who have studied Bharata Natyum and it will be great to share my knowledge with them and share it with my friends who do Western Dance. It will also be great to show my parents and friends videos of my performance.

I guess I just really cannot wait until I have more to show for all my hard word. I look forward to every class. We will be adding more hours per week in the next month so that we can complete the routine. It is exciting. We also will be meeting with a tailor and getting our special outfits. I already have all of my jewelry; I will photograph it later and include it in a later post.    

History of Bharata Natyum

The dance form of Bharata Natyum started in Tamil Nadu, which is the most southern state on the western coast. Bharata Natyum was first written in various ancient texts, like the Natyashastra which is where most of the information of classical dance came from. It was a religious text that also talked about the various deities. One of the lines of the Natyashastra reads that "when the world had become steeped in greed and desire, in jealousy and anger, in pleasure and pain, the Supreme one was asked by people to create an entertainment which could be seen and heard bu all, for the scriptures were not enjoyed by the masses, being too learned and ambiguous." This verse talks about how Bharata Natyum was created to be a religious devotional form that took the place of texts that the majority of people could not read.

In many Hindu temples in South India, Devadasis, people would sing and dance in sanskrit as well as the vernacular. Eventually the dance moved from temples to Royal courts in the 1850's. The dance form remained static for centuries, not changing from its rigid form. It was revitalized in the 19th century by the Thanjavur Quartet, who were four brothers influenced by their musical mentor.

British colonialist rule brought obstacles to the development and the performance of art. They did not want this classical form to be present in modern day culture. The did not allow the dancers to perform at court. Dance took on a negative connotation that it was done for sensual reasons. Dancers were instead performing for the wealthy instead of the politically powerful. The act of dancing became somewhat scandalized.

In the 20th century, it fortunately got revitalized by a mixture of freedom fighters, Westerners into classical arts, and form those who once learnt Bharata Natyum. Bhraman families were also attracted to the art form which helped the dance regain some of its credibility. In addition, major western dancers like Anna Pavlova took an interest in the form. A major contemporary figure in Bharata Natuym, Rukmini Devi, performed in 1935. Devi was a teacher in Madras and she was able to bring a more orthodox audience into Bharata Natyum after it had been so scandalized.

Over time, it has changed and has spread nationally and internationally. 

Introduction

Hello, my name is Jackie Goldman and I will be blogging about my experience with Bharatanatyam. Bharatanatyam is a classical Indian dance coming from Tamil Nadu in South India. There is a very long history of this dance, but I will go into it another time. I want to take this introduction to explain my first impressions and feelings about Bharatanatyam as well as some things that I have learned so far.

As someone who has taken western dance for over a decade, I was very excited to start learning an eastern type of classical dance. When I first heard that we only needed to have 52 hours of dance this semester, I was very sad. It did not seem like much time at all. I was so excited that we were starting so early in the semester. It was also great to learn that I would be taking this class with a friend of mine, Alex, and that we would eventually perform a duet. I had never performed a duet and I have never taken a semi-private dance class.

I learned from the first class that Bharatanatyam was like nothing I have ever learned. Unlike in western dance where you learn a lot and then polish, everything in Bharatanatyam is precise from the beginning. We spent a class learning how to do the half sitting position, how to hold our arms and how to slap our feet so that we would make the most sound. I had never had to do a dance form where sound was the goal. Well, I took tap dancing, and still love it, but the type of noise that one has to make is very different. In tap, you rely on the metal shoe to make the noise. There is not supposed to be much force in the step. Bharatanatyam has forced me to learn to put all my weight into my feet.

We spent the first few classes learning tattaros which are the most basic of the steps. They are really just a basic slap. There are 8 of them. The difference between the 8 are just number of slaps per leg and the rhythm.

The second and third week, we learned nattaros which are a bit more complex. They involve some moving and different foot-works. There are 8 nattaros and we know all 8.

Throughout this time, we have have learned 8 head movements, 8 eye movements, 4 neck movement, 24 single hand gesture and 24 double hand gestures. We have also learned a series of steps that are knows by the name of "ta tai tai tats" after the sounds of the feet as well as Tatti Meti steps. Here is a good link that explains the basic step and has pictures (http://btnydance.weebly.com/basic-steps.html) It does a much better job than I could do of explaining the basic foot-works.

After the Diwali break, we are going to start working on the duet and I am very excited.