Getting to know you

This is once again a post that relates to Tabla and Bharata Natyum.

One of the best things about taking a tutorial is the ability to get to know your instructors on a personal basis. This semester, I have had the opportunity to get to know two different and wonderful Indian families. My Bharata Natyum comes from Maharashtra originally. She started taking dance when she was older and met her husband in her Bharata Natyum class. The marriage was part love and part arranged. Her husband's mother was also a dancer, and even though she is quite old now, she still loves to watch me dance. I can see how much she loves dance. Today, I met my teacher's older sister. Interacting with the family has given me a lot of insight into how arts are transferred from generation to generation. Mala Ji's daughters both studied Bharata Natyum and one of them is a professional teacher. The arts are clearly important to the family both culturally and historically. Dance brought the family together.

My Tabla Guru, Gyan Ji, also comes from a line of tabla players. His father taught him, and even though his son is only 1, he is already playing around on the tabla. Gyan Ji's wife is a professional singer and also teaches classical singing. I celebrated Saraswati Puja with them. Both of them invited students to their house and did puja. I was evident to me that arts and teaching are something that they both value. They are another example of how arts are generational. I expect that Gopu, the adorable one year old, will become an excellent tabla player, just like his father.

What is great about interacting with these two families is not only the knowledge, but the personal relationships I have formed. I was invited to see my tabla guru perform a solo for all of his older students. I was the youngest by maybe 5 or 10 years, but they were still welcoming and were excited that I was just starting to play. Unlike the students who have been studying tabla for some time, I did not know all of the compositions that he played, but I was able to understand the solo. I have become part of a musical community. I have more friends here and more personal relationships. This aspect of the tutorial is as important to me as the actual skill or art form. I will be sad to leave my teachers, but know that I will connect with them though the virtual world for years to come. I hope to continue my tabla study on my own once I get to the U.S, but it will never compare to learning and interacting with such a family.   

Tabla and Bharata Natyum Second Semester Introduction

I have been playing Tabla for two weeks now, and I absolutely love it. I love the rhythms and sounds. I practice at least an hour everyday and go to class most days. My teacher's house is warm and friendly. Often, his one year old son comes out and starts causing banging on all of the drums, but it is adorable so I do not mind. Like Bharata Natyum, I have been using and learning "bols," the words that correspond to sound and rhythm patterns. Even though I have only been learning for a short time, I feel like I have learned so much. My host family and teacher say so at least. The tell me that my sound is getting better. I can tell too; I actually like the sound coming and the patterns now come much more easily. The muscle memory is quite amazing.

Practicing is meditative in that I will play the variation for around ten minutes. Playing the same thing over and over is not as frustrating as I thought it might be. It can get really frustrating when I do it so well at home, and then freeze during class, but the playing itself is great. I always practice around 4pm when I am feeling most tired from the day. At the end of the hour, I am never tired; I am so excited by the music.

I have started listening to more classical Indian music and it has brought peace to my room and my environs. I can hear the tabla masters and understand what kinds of patterns they are doing. I can hear that we are doing many of the same ones, but they play much faster and their sounds and more consistent. That is okay with me because two weeks ago, I could not even get a basic note to resonate.

I love my drums, I have three. Two smaller ones (diyina) and a big one (bahina). One of the small ones is a higher pitch drum. My first teacher bought it for me because it would be good for my small hands. I had to switch teachers for a strange circumstance that I will not get into, but the second teacher, whom I like much more, said that the small drum was a mistake. I agree with him; the smaller drum did not let my hands get stronger or more precise.

I have started Bharata Natyum after a month long break. It was very hard at first, my legs had forgotten how to half sit and I had forgotten some of the combinations, but they came back. I find the class frustrating sometimes. I basically am told for two hours that my hands, feet and everything else are wrong all of the time. I have yet to be told one good thing about my dancing from my teacher. I do not expect constant admiration, but I would like to hear that I did a variation particularly well or something.

I am learning how to tell stories by way of gesture. I have learned how to tell the story of how Krishna stole clothes from some maidens when they were bathing. I like the gesture work; it has allowed me to work on my eye, face, neck and hand expression. We are also working on harder pure dance combinations, which are fun. I have also learned more of the single hand expressions and what the hand expressions can be uses to gesture. Can you believe that one hand gesture can be used to gesture things like, a horse, cutting, darkness, forest, kindness, valor, heat and much more? I have learned twelve ways to use a flat hand with all fingers joined (patak). There are somewhere around 40 ways. There is a Sanskrit chant ( a shloka) that has them all, and I have been learning that.

It feels great to get myself so involved with the arts again. I missed the month without dancing and adding the drums has just made it better.  

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.