A recent article in The Hindu about teaching Bharatanatyam for its therapeutic benefits to women and housewives acknowledges the importance of making dance accessible to all genres of participants. Even while dance continues to enjoy a professional standard, with the necessary training being imparted that grooms dancers for a performing career, such an acknowledgment coming from one of the stalwart gurus of Chennai, who is known for the professional dancers he has brought forth, underscores the fact that it is equally important to make the same professional standards of training available to those who may not be aiming at or reaching out for the stage. It exposes the relevance that is being given to its practice in a modern world, where we are looking beyond categorizations and segregations. It is an important step in the right direction. This aspect however also poses challenges to teachers, both in the methods of teaching and the approach to dance in general.
Dear Rajyashree,
ReplyDeleterecently I see more and more a connectivity between the formation of sentences in spoken or written language an the movements in Bharatanatyam as we learn it in your classes. So do the sentences bring us to certain points in logical space, stay there and move on, as movement leads to certain places in space, stays there and goes on. In your article I was guided from women and housewives into the problems of dance education in modern cultures, have been following the big bow from professional on stage performance to therapeutic, humanitarian and cultural aspects, made a step forward into the future, a step backwards into the past and have done SAMA in the presence, in the now guided by the article.
Heinz.