Bharata Natyam is not for the weak?

9 Jun, 2020

Written by Tejsree Beharee

Tejsree is the founder of the Nritya Tej Dance Academy, where she teaches Bharata Natyam and Indian folk dances. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Performing Arts (Bharata Natyam) and through her dance school, she strives to create awareness about the dance form and expand its potential by both presenting educative shows and by writing on various dance topics.

In this article, the author delves into what she believes is the most important characteristic of a Bharata Natyam student and dancer.  She attempts to peel the layers of this subject by presenting published data from other respectable authors and eventually offering her own take on the matter, based on her experience as a secondary school Bharata Natyam educator.

The south Indian classical dance, Bharata Natyam, which has its roots in Tamil Nadu (William, 2004) and which stems from the precincts of the temple, is now everywhere across the globe and has transcended the barriers of ethnicity and race (Saluja, 2019). That is, it is now widely taught and hence the following question is even more relevant today than it was years ago; “What are desirable characteristics of a Bharata Natyam dancer?”.

As per Indian classical dance scriptures, one should be possessing certain qualities to learn Bharata Natyam. One of those dance treatises, the Abhinaya Darpana, mentions the ten essential qualities of a dancer (Coomaraswamy and Duggirala, 1917) which are: agility, steadiness, graceful lines, balance in pirouettes, glance, hard work, intelligence, devotion, good speech and singing ability.

In the Natya Shastra, another dance treatise, the author, Bharata Muni states that a female dancer should have the following attributes to be a classical dancer: “Women who have beautiful limbs, are conversant with the sixty-four arts and crafts (Kala), are clever, courteous in behavior, free from female diseases, always bold, free from indolence, inured to hard work, capable of practicing various arts and crafts, skilled in dancing and songs, who excel by their beauty, youthfulness, brilliance and other qualities all other women standing by, are known as female dancers.” (Ghosh, 2016).

However, in the 21st century, dancers are no longer obligated to fulfill all of these criteria. That is not to say that attributes like hard work and gracefulness are no longer current. Yet, as a dance student and a teacher, there is one quality that has caught my attention, and that is mental strength.  

For many aspiring dancers, it all starts with a passion, which leads one to a dance class, with dreamy eyes and an ambition to one day be wearing that attire, the nupura (anklets), and be performing. But before reaching that dream, one should undergo training, which starts with the araimandi (half-sitting position). Many drop the course at this level itself. Nevertheless, the mentally strong refuse to give up. They want to explore more. They start learning the basic steps, starting with the adavus (basic dance steps) and unfortunately, there are more dropouts. Still, the mentally strong keep going, for the love of art. A Bharata Natyam dancer from Europe gave her views to Hinduism Today, an online magazine (Malik, 2014), stating that her Guru, Sonal Mansingh Ji, triggered her attention to Bharata Natyam as being a holistic way of living. She elaborates that the dance form focuses one’s attention on the way one walks, talks, dresses, feels and breathes. As a learner, it was this way of living that swept her off her feet and drove her to make a lifelong commitment to it. However, as a dance teacher, she had to face all types of students. She attests that, while facing the challenges of learning the dance, the ‘lazy ones’ were just waiting for an excuse to stop. During her teaching experiences, she observed that, learning new dance steps or new dance terms would either deepen the students’ curiosity to learn more or just elicit the indifferent ones to drop out halfway through. As a result, her advice to learners is, whether in dance or any academic study, to do it with commitment.

As students escalate the steps of learning, from simple striking and stretching of the feet to jumping and holding the bodyweight on the toes, from full sitting to turning, or dancing on the knees, some start ‘absenting’ (subtle dropouts) themselves from classes. Yet again, the mentally strong ones keep going. They are thirsty to learn more and determined to build their strength and stamina.

These students go through an intensive dance practice accompanied by muscle pain and the need to keep smiling while heavily tired on the inside. Even so, they do not give up. Some do it as a hobby course, for three years and above, and others do it as an academic pathway with a minimum of fourteen years of studying. Then I wonder, “Aren’t these students as strong as Rama and Sita who spent fourteen years in exile?”.  Malavika Sarukkai, a Bharata Natyam doyen, explains in The Telegraph (Guha, 2017) that her desire to learn Bharata Natyam was unwavering. She launched herself in a disciplined and dedicated practice, being aware that she has chosen a tough regime. In her own words: “I was mentally strong to follow that, which is what Bharatanatyam or any classical dance is all about”. She further adds that parents play an important role in learning this Indian classical dance. The learning process requires such a high level of commitment that the ‘wannabes’, as she calls them, discontinue midway.

There are two parallel worlds of dance learners. In one, some are engineers, doctors, or teachers, learning Bharata Natyam in their free time.  Likewise, it is not uncommon to find students learning Bhrata Natyam alongside their academic education.  In the other world, many are discontinuing their dance course, making excuses out of the same reasons – that they have jobs or that they are students taken up with their studies. From an article in Narthaki.com, ‘Busy working mothers becoming classical dancers’, women juggling between their profession and family life talk about their commitment to Bharata Natyam. They take it as a challenge to manage their time to incorporate dance in their life. They undergo the training for its elegance and beauty or as a motivation to stay fit or simply to fulfill their passion.

Today, in America, when one applies for university or a job, if that person possesses training in Bharata Natyam, he or she has an advantage over other candidates. According to Rathna Kumar, a dance teacher from the USA, the interviewer sees in the dancer, someone who can commit to something and consistently learn with sincerity, thus being serious enough to commit to the course or the job they are applying for (Krishna Gana Sabha, 2020).

So, coming back to the qualities required to be a dancer, though the criteria mentioned in the dance treatises could be beneficial ones, in my opinion, mental strength is the key to overcome all the associated difficulties and fall in love with the subject. Somewhere in between the lines, Bharata Natyam singles out the mentally strong students and goes on further to train them to become even stronger.

It would be unfair not to dedicate a few words to those who are keen to learn the dance but have physical restraints. Some students suffer from physical conditions that impede them from continuing their path in dance. During the dance course, the body is physically involved, to the extent of having muscle build-up that complements the graceful flow that runs in the human physiology. But what if the learner is determined to learn, but the latter’s bones and joints are not providing the support needed? Along with being mentally strong, a healthy and sane body is required. Attention must be paid to a few symptoms when physically involved in dance (Migdol, 2018). Certain people face pelvic pain conditions which makes it difficult to use the hips, others suffer from fainting conditions called dysautonomia, which is a malfunction of the nervous system causing passing out when the heart rate and the blood pressure changes during prolonged standing periods. According to Migdol (2018), who is a senior editor for ‘chronic illnesses’ at The Mighty, there are more similar physical conditions like rheumatoid arthritis which causes joint pain, fibromyalgia which leads to muscle weakness and fatigue, post-exertional malaise, or difficulty breathing illnesses like asthma or cystic fibrosis, hence making it difficult to participate in any physical activities.

Nevertheless, certain physical limitations do not stand as barriers between the dancer and the dance. From my experience, I once taught the classical dance to the deaf and mute. Their proceeding mechanism is to concentrate and observe the teacher’s movements, convert the movements into counts and reproduce it. It worked out wonderfully.  Sometimes, the movements are taught on music, and they would follow the beats as if they can hear the tunes. But what is happening is that the cogs and gears in their brain are controlling their mental ability to deliver the steps correctly which concurs with Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In this case, the deaf-mute student activates the spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences to visualize with the mind’s eye and render the movements (Gardner and Hatch, 1989).

To conclude, if anyone wants to learn Bharata Natyam, they should pack their bag with a genuine interest in learning it, along with mental strength and a healthy physical body. And on the teacher’s side, he or she should make sure that they guide and manage the expectations of student such that the path and hurdles ahead are clear. Like that, one can condition oneself to be mentally determined, and even if lacking in mental strength in early days, during the journey, one is to become tenacious eventually. So, is Bharata Natyam not for the weak ones? Or is passion alone enough to learn it? Maybe it is for those who know what is required to become a dancer, just like knowing how deep the water is before diving into it.

Reference

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