Life lessons from dance - Bharatanatyam

Life lessons from dance - Bharatanatyam 

Bharatanatyam teaches us how to perform actions without entanglement both from the dancer and the audience perspective.

Dancer Perspective

As a dancer, the dancer must align with the a given scene (Bhavam), music (Ragam), and rhythm (Tala), to bring out the emotions, that get expressed facial expressions, mudras and body movements so that dance as a whole is in sync with the scene she is trying to portray.  This entire process becomes much tougher when she must switch to multiple characters within few seconds.

For example, the dancer had to constantly switch to multiple characters in quick successions.  Consider the following varnams portrayed by the dancer:

• From, Devaki to Krishna to Vasudeva to Krishna and then to Vasudeva.
• From demon Pootana to beautiful Pootana.
• From warrior Arjuna to Krishna
• From warrior Arjuna to weakened, despondent Arjuna
• From Krishna who calms down Arjuna, to Arjuna
• From Viswaroopam Krishna to Arjuna who was frightened seeing this roopa

Imagine, if the dancer gets things mixed up.  For example, if the dancer lingers upon despondent Arjuna for some more seconds, he / she could not perform well portraying Krishna giving advice (Upadesa) to Arjuna. 

When the dancer performs dance very nicely, we will be able to distinguish and appreciate the characters very well. Dance itself should bring immense joy to the dancer if she neither lingers on the previous scenes nor worries about the upcoming scenes but continue to dance that was aligned with the scene and the characters she tried to convey to the audience at that moment.  The dancer joyfully leaves the previous scene and readily takes upon the next scene without any entanglement.

What all these means for our life situations from a Spirituality or connecting to divinity standpoint?  In our life, situations invoke emotions and emotions play an important role. Sometimes, these emotions still linger upon a long time affecting the performance of entirely new set of actions.  For example, something that went wrong at work, can affect how I behave with the family, long after I come back from work.

What does connect to the divinity means?  To align with the given life situation: my emotions, thoughts, facial expressions, and body movements must be in complete synch like the dance performance.  As I am ready to perform the next act, like the dancer, neither the past nor the future emotions, thoughts, facial expressions, body movements should impact the current act, they all should align with the current life situation.

Like the dancer, I should be able to joyfully leave the previous action and readily take upon the next action without any entanglement.  This is the complete freedom in action.  This means, as an actor (dancer), I continue to live in the present moment amidst continuous changes around me and within me.

 Truly speaking I am not the doer, the actions continue to take place, this body moves (dances) as per the supreme will (the real dancer). 

Needless to say, like the dancer, living in the present moment is connecting to divinity as there is RASA – Bliss, which is nothing but SELF or BRAHMAN.

Thus, Bharatanatyam teaches how to act as a dancer in line with the life situations.

 Audience Perspective

From the audience perspective, we take an inward journey (Gross – Body to Subtle - Emotions), watch the dancer’s mudras, dance movements through our eyes, assimilate those movements as thoughts in our mind, which invoke emotions within us.  

Like the dancer, to completely appreciate the dance, the audience must “follow” the dance without entertaining any other thoughts.  Other thoughts may appear, they are neither followed nor suppressed.  Every time, we notice the thoughts are wandering away, the attention is brought back to the dance performance, so that all those aspects grossest to subtlest are aligned.

As the dancer moves through various scenes and characters, they are appreciated to the full extent, without getting entangled to any of previous scenes or upcoming scenes. For example, we may also experience similar type of emotions such as joy, sadness, angry, jealousy, etc. within ourselves.  But they are all momentary for that scene.  There is a deep ecstasy in witnessing all these scenes irrespective of the emotion types including sadness, but never carried over to the next scene.  This means, living in the present moment, which in turn means experiencing the RASA – Bliss within one SELF.

This also could be explained in a different manner.  When the audience follows this precisely with a pure appreciation of dance, without any strings of attachments or aversions, the audience finds the emotions are invoked within and not outside anymore.  Thus, the audience finds that the entire dance is happening within one SELF, thus breaking the duality or the divisions among the dancer, the audience, the act of watching the dance, all becomes ONE.  The absence of division enables the audience to recognize the RASA.   This is the divine cosmic dance (Aanandha Dhandava) that is happening in the hall of consciousness (Chit Saba)

Thus, the dancer enables us (as the audience) to take the inward journey towards the SELF – Brahman by pure appreciation of the dance.

Neither the dancer who performed so many emotions over multiple scenes nor the audience who watched those scenes would take them as real.  However, both the dancer and the audience have appreciated those scenes during their momentary appearances.

Thus, Bharatanatyam teaches us both from the dancer and the audience perspective how to connect to divinity and continuously live in the RASA amidst continuous movements in our life situations and enjoy the freedom in action without any entanglement.