Why Bharatanatyam – Part One

Dear Students and Dance Friends,

If you ask even the tiniest dancer why he/she learns Bharatanatyam, the immediate answer will be ‘Culture’. It is a broad term and yet so specific. So, your parents left India and wish to keep a link with things that remind them of their home country, that’s fine. But how about you. Isn’t it enough if your meal consists of rice, roti or raita; or if you wore Indian clothes to an Indian function once or twice a year; or if you understood a few Indian words here and there and allowed your parents to play those old Indian black and white movie songs...

You have heard me define culture: food, language, dress, music, hair as external features. Religion, family, and social behaviour as internal features.

Why go through such hardships at the risk of your social life and use up all your spare time pounding ‘tai tai tam di di tai’.

When my younger son assigned me a task of writing why Bharatanatyam is important, I begin jotting down my thoughts and the first factor that topped the list was ‘Culture’. Culture enables you to live in harmony. Culture creates an awareness of one’s own behaviour. Culture makes you environmental conscious.

KNS has performed for the State Department, Department of Labor, Department of Health, Booze & Allen, Textile Museum, US Postal Service, Immigration & Naturalization, Dulles Airport, and the list goes on and on. At all these places, we were part of a ‘Heritage’ month. A heritage to look back with pride.

Indian culture, like its wealth, was looted by Moghuls, by Alexander, by Britishers. It got disfigured over and over again. But Bharatanatyam represents an unfiltered culture. You have an established code to follow. Natyashastra and Abhinaya Darpana. There is no variation, no modifications to suit our lifestyle or changing times or geographical location. A recipe can change from one generation to another. Social ethics can get altered. But Bharatanatyam will remain the same decade after decade, generation after generation.

In fact, Bharatanatyam dancers, my dear KNS students, carry more of the Indian culture than their counterparts in India. One of my students went to India a few years ago to attend a wedding. She had tons of cousins who danced to disco music while she performed Bharatanatyam. What a contrast! We are at least 30 years behind Indian times.

But the culture you develop is unbiased and pure. These days when we go for everything pure and natural – from water to air – why not go for a cultural link that is not diluted in any way.

More to come,

Very truly yours,

Rani