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.