“Run! Run faster and you will get there quicker!”, is all we hear and do in our lives. We are consistently surrounded by the demand to manage regardless of how. On the different finish of the spectrum, our historic practices train us to be nonetheless.
Yoga and classical dance are each indigenous traditions of India that search the similar objective — to pay attention to the breath and let the praana information each motion. To have interaction each the body and the mind to behave directly for a holistic expertise. The historic practices counsel that we pause to have interaction deeply with life, and compassionately with ourselves.
Yoga allows the mind-body steadiness that assist us make higher decisions for residing.
Dancers are complicated motion artistes. They need to be contortionists, martial artists, poets, story tellers and sculptors all of sudden. They don’t simply convey an thought to life once they dance however create life itself in every second. As a dancer, my body modifications each second to stick to a complexly shifting mind. From the slightest quiver of a lip and the fleeting angle of the eye to the mild tremble of a finger, all come collectively to precise a single nuanced emotion.
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For dancers, body is a residing instrument
| Photo Credit:
Karthik Venkatraman
For a dancer, the body is a residing instrument. If my body should go to locations that my mind seeks in its creativeness, I need to prepare to stretch its potential in order that I’ll inhabit these boundless worlds. Thus when the body, mind and spirit come collectively, now we have reached our objective.
Martha Graham, the nice modern dancer and choreographer stated, “I am a dancer. I believe we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living”.
In the pursuit of excellence, for the previous 35 years that I’ve lived the lifetime of a dancer at Nrityagram, yoga and other forms of cross-training has been built-in into our each day schedule. For years now, now we have studied and developed body kinetics that mix totally different views of coaching to particularly nourish and inform the Odissi body. In my preliminary years as a scholar, I discovered a lacuna in the utility of yoga observe to the strains of alignment inside which the Odissi dancer should perform. Most practitioners of yoga might not be dancers or essentially perceive the forces performing on a dancer’s body. I felt this to be the central motive for the accidents I confronted as a dancer. I subsequently tried to know on my very own by way of analysis and research methods to heal myself and to make sure that none who educated with me would undergo the similar injury. Choosing selectively from totally different types of body work, we created a curriculum that may improve our potential as performers.
Dancers throughout yoga periods at Nrityagram.
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Nrityagram
At Nrityagram, the dancers start their day with a stroll or run, then clear the gurukul areas, adopted by body conditioning workout routines. Each day is a unique mannequin that should reply to the body’s want for that individual day. In order to try this, the dancers should first put together their mind in order that it assimilates the body’s wants making certain the proper selection of workout routines to higher their observe for that day. Each bone and muscle should be oxygenated and lubricated to sufficiently ship at the highest degree. Once this preparation is full, an additional warm-up is finished in school earlier than the rigour of complicated dance vocabulary is undertaken. After many hours on the dance flooring, we enable the body time to de-stress with stretches which can be fitted to every dancer to get well as shortly as potential.
Nrityagram has been at the very forefront of building the concept that the longevity of a dance profession relies upon on the ample safety and respect we should give to and have for our our bodies. Both choreographically and as performers, now we have pushed our skills to render new dimensions of ability in the classical dance world. This, in flip, has impressed artistes to discover new and extra environment friendly methods of working each in Odissi and different dance types.
Yoga and dance collectively can assist obtain each yogic stillness and a versatile body.
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Nrityagram
Dance traditions in India have been handed down by way of generations of artistes. As we stare upon the dancing figures on temple partitions, we search what they’ve — each yogic stillness and versatile body. Yoga and dance collectively can assist us obtain this.
Though AI and bots have entered the human area and threaten to do all that we are able to, it can’t for now specific what the dancer’s body can. Until then, allow us to proceed to nourish this extraordinary instrument referred to as the human body by way of yoga and dance.
Published – June 19, 2025 06:21 pm IST
