In a land of diversities in all spheres from culture to climate, from religion to celebrations.
Every region expresses its culture distinctly according to the ethos of the people of that particular region.And as dances are a coherent expression of human nature thoughts and feelings, each form of dance that originates, encapsulates it distinctly.
Indian dances can be broadly divided into Classical Dance Forms Semi Classical and the Folk forms.
The most well known Classical Dance styles of India are the Kathak, Odissi & Manipuri of Northern and Eastern parts of India.And
Bharatanatyam Kuchipudi and Mohiniattam Kathakali from Southern parts of India.
Classical Dance and Arts is given a revered status as according to the legends, the Gods invented the dance. It incorporates music melody beats drama form and line along with gestures through hand fingers and eye movements.
The elaborate costumes and heavy makeup somehow helps convey many depictions of the overall performances.
There are a number of Folk dance forms that are performed as well.
Traditionally all these forms have been structured around the nine emotions or rasas namely:
Hasya: happiness
Shoka: sorrow
Krodha: anger
Karuna: compassion
Bhibatsa: disgust
Adbuta: wonder
Bhaya: fear
Viram: courage
And Shanta: serenity.
The earliest Indian religious texts have described creation in terms of a dance. And the dances of India are said to have their origins in the Vedic Age of 1000BC
Even today the practice of the Indian dances have an element of religious rituals although much may have changed with time.
Musings on Dancing
A dance is an expression of who we are, our mindset our bodies our culture all intermingled inextricably. It is a statement of our roots and our connection to others.
We can express ourselves by learning and staying rooted in the structure or choose to vary and fuse and develop our understanding by adding to the repertoire other dance forms and evolve in the sharing. The choice is ours to choose. We don’t need to discard old learning as we learn something new but align ourselves to understand the larger picture. This way we experience diversity for ourselves as we learn to see the significance of every form its contribution its essence and relevance of its roots in culture through the movements and expression. Learning dance from different lands helps us understand and evolve. We can learn to respect others traditions and cultures while valuing our own.
When I shared this beautiful picture of the Jacaranda Trees on the social media yesterday this post got a lot of responses… and continues to pour in still. Perhaps it touches the chord of connectedness somewhere amidst the roots.
Am highlighting a few learnings along the way for me through this post.
My friend John Rylance mentioned about how much the beautiful work ‘ Endymion’ the poem with the opening line ….
‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’ by John Keats applies to this picture . In his words ..
So much of this poem reflects your Jacaranda tree picture, it could so easily be an illustration to accompany the work.@John Rylance
Sharing a few curated verses from the poem Endymion-
A thing-beauty-joy-ever…
Paths there were many,
Winding through palmy fern, and rushes fenny,
And ivy banks; all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn,
whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between
the swell Of turf and slanting branches: who could tell
The freshness of the space of heaven above,
Edg’d round with dark tree tops? through which a dove
Would often beat its wings, and often too
A little cloud would move across the blue.
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”. Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. WikipediaOriginally published:1818
I also came across the video clip about these trees there..
In response my friends Claire Cardwell and Gert Scholtz mentioned about Pretoria and Johanesburg in South Africa having huge number of these trees still.. inspite of the opposition to these so called alien invasions …
@Savvy Raj there was a very vocal minority a few years back that wanted to chop down all the Jacaranda trees as they are not indigenous to South Africa. Fortunately the majority over-ruled them! You can’t however now buy a Jacaranda sapling at the nursery to plant in your garden. I do love them, I think the best places to see them in Joburg are in Linden, Northcliff Hill and in an office block in Rosebank – looking down all you can see is purple. Thanks for the post! Claire Cardwell
@Savvy Raj Jacaranda’s are truly beautiful. They bloom this time of year and our street plus many surrounding areas are covered with bright blue-purple flowers. Pretoria is known as the Jacaranda city, but Johannesburg where I live, actually has more of these trees lining the streets. Very nice post Savvy – thanks for the video too.
And then as I happened to share this photograph with my family and here is what my mother comes up with…
“The twisted branches signify the conflicts in our wavering minds and the clarity of the sky of the blue in the background with the bewitching pink flowers assures us of the positive solutions at the end .” Anjana
It is often said that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”…. as beauty can be a very subjective and a personal choice and experience of life. This attraction or admiration, after all, is an interpretation of harmony, of proportion in the features attributed to a culture for beauty.
Is beauty measurable to a certain standard? Well according to the Golden Ratio, the ideal result for an attractive face would be 1.6. Greeks believed a beautiful face is 1.6 times longer than its width. But then it has been refuted by attributing it simply to the ability of pattern recognition by humans. After all cultural differences have strange ideas of what is beautiful and they seem poles apart from each other. Such is the paradox of beauty!
From smooth skin devoid of wrinkles, a long neck and flowing hair, to face tattoos and body scars, long earlobes, shaved heads, pale skins to small feet, to full figures different countries and culture have different standards of beauty.
Take the case of some Eastern countries where straightened hair is considered beautiful and many are turning to chemical hair straighteners and flat ironing for holding up to standards of beauty. Girls in Mauritania, West Africa when shown an article about liposuction, laugh so hard in disbelief as it shocks their concepts of what is beautiful. In fact, this goes to extreme measures like ‘Leblouh’ the practice of force feeding girls to have heavy figures and stretch marks like in Mauritania, to the overwhelming numbers of rhinoplasty in Iran and where women wearing post-surgical bandages consider it as a badge of honour and wealth.
The human capacity to appreciate beauty has perhaps radically evolved with the species and men and woman see and process beauty differently. Humans are complex beings and if beauty were a language, its expression would be unique to every individual with respect to their nature and nurture.
So in the quest towards understanding the beauty and the ideals of beauty, there are many questions …
Is there a possibility of greater survival of what is considered beautiful.?
Or is the reverse true?
History is replete with numerous wars on account or on behalf of desire to possess own nurture, save and protect beautiful people animals or things.And beauty becomes a victim of situations and often is the cause of chaos and destruction.
The very beauty that emits an utter of exclamation of awe in the admiration of the exquisite creation can extract emotional outbursts and create and spread hate and malice, upheavals that can mar the course of peace in history and cause wars.
Beauty can thus become a two-edged sword.
Is there more to the reason there exists for the quality of beauty and its perception.The genetic codes that determine beauty can be there for the purpose of an evolution of the species and refinement in the subtlety of consciousness….
There is beauty in a soul that is kind without prejudice
There is beauty in choosing to transform to a better person inside out.
There is beauty in words spoken and deeds of generosity
There is beauty in making people feel valuable
As after all beauty is in the way you make another feel.
Savvy
Image Credits: An Artwork by Savvy Raj from a series Titled: ‘Faces’
Savvy Raj 
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