By Shruti Pattekar
Multifaith Ambassador, President of Hindu YUVA
This post is part of our series on "The Arts and Spirituality" Check out more by following the "The Arts and Spirituality" tag.
There is one good thing about being practically blind without my glasses. When I stand on a stage in front of 400 people about to make my first dance movement, I can’t see a single face in the audience. There’s just me and a bunch of bright light. I am free. But honestly, even if I had perfect eyesight, I would feel the same freedom and fearlessness as I do without glasses. Why? Because dancing is my connection to spirituality. When I dance, I am connected to Brahman - the energy that is inside all of us and between us, the energy that is both where we are and where we are not. When I dance, I am overcome by this energy.
Bharatanatyam, the Indian class dance form that I have been practicing for 17 years, has three main components: Bhavam - expression, Ragam - melodic framework, and Taalam - rhythm. These three components form Natyam - dance. If you combine the syllables of these words together, you get Bha-Ra-Ta-Natyam, the name of this beautiful dance form.
Bharatanatyam footwork is complicated, fast, and hard. Lots of pressure is placed into the floor, and evidence of that is clearly seen by the bruises and cuts our ankles get from the loud bells tied around them. Therefore, the first thing any Bharatanatyam student learns in their first class, regardless of their worldview, is how to do Namaskar. This is a short sequence of dance movements that shows gratitude to the divine Mother Earth by asking for forgiveness for vigorously stepping on her. Along with respect to Mother Earth, the Namaskar gives gratitude to our Guru, who through our eyes strongly embodies the divine. This small dance sequence is done both before and after dancing, whether it is a regular practice or a full performance. Because this gratefulness and connectivity to the divine through dance was taught to me at such a young age, I continued experiencing this through the numerous dances I learned since then.
Bharatanatyam dancers are storytellers. Our facial expressions and movements tell
stories about gods and goddesses and about devotion. I never understood the language of the songs that I danced to, as it was not my mother tongue, but my Guru was wonderful at explaining the song to me, so that I could bring out the expressions and devotion I needed to take the role of the character I would embody. This embodiment always allowed me to feel even closer to spirituality, and it made me into a stronger Hindu. Whether I was playing the role of a god, a bride, or even a demon, I felt one with the divine.
Art can come in many forms - dance, music, visual art, writing, speech, innovation, pure creativity. I believe we all have our own forms of art through which we express ourselves - our emotions, our beliefs, our thoughts and ideas, and our worldviews. Art is an essential part of being human. Although you may not see your art form as “art,” I hope that you are able to discover it in this lifetime, just as I did mine.
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