Geometry and Taal .
Mo
By Anubhav Tagore
The Pioneer
Human rhythm is guided by the sense of sound. Sound is
caused by movement. And movement is a sign of life and
all energy without movement, there can be no life.
Thus, motion and sound are inextricably entwined when we
move, we create and expend energy at the same time. The
Greek word energeia or energy, is the inevitable result
of perceived sound and physical motion.
Sound finds its cathartic manifestation in the form of
music. It is music that forms the basis of all dance and
rhythmic motion.
The dances of early man and even in existing primitive
societies, is not an entertainment. Most dances have a
purpose, with magical or religious connotations. Early
man lived close to nature the sun and the moon, thunder
and rain, and animals that fed and clothed him. He danced
to express his feelings about these things. These dances
were primarily rhythms stamped out with the feet.
Early man danced before he added simple music to
accompany his movements or singing, to describe what he
was doing. The urge to dance or to express ourselves
through the movement of our bodies is so primordial and
basic, that it existed even in the ancestors of men, tens
of thousands of years ago. Today, when we say that we
could jump for joy or that we are hopping mad , we are
still responding to an instinct that is more ancient than
speech or music. Dancing makes patterns in space, and to
have any real meaning requires a sense of rhythm: that
is, bodily movement performed to a regular beat or pulse.
As in music, rhythm is one of the key features of
dancing.
Dancing is not just a matter of steps. Signs that have
been carefully worked out, and instinctive actions, come
into it as well. Signs have always been used by people to
communicate with each other: a nod of the head means the
same thing in most parts of the world. Some cultures use
more gestures than others. This is particularly true of
people who live in the Mediterranean countries, where the
warm and invigorating climate encourages outdoor life and
a more expansive attitude to living. In India, the
performing arts were through time, continuously
revitalised and revived by the presence of rich folk and
village traditions. Whenever the sophisticated forms of
dance would reach a point of baroque ornateness, verging
on decadence, it has been the full throated primordial
folk traditions that have resurrected the evolutionary
patterns of dance, and the performing arts in general.
A creative genius would then synergise folk traditions
with sophisticated creative poetry the combination of
contextual sahitya and elements of dance, which could be
culled out of fragments of earlier classical traditions,
which lingered in folk forms, giving rise to a new
classicity.
Thematically, many dance styles revolved around Krishna's
love story, especially as narrated in the tenth chapter
of the Shrimadbhagavata. In all parts of India, the
literary type of musical composition was not merely an
accompaniment. The word was important, because it was
what was being interpreted through mime. In the abstract
portions, different talas and different patterns of
stylised movement evolved.
The most important and fundamental theoretical work is
the Natyasastra, composed some time between 2nd century
B.C. and 2nd century A.D. No dance text deals with the
technique of human movement or kinetic in isolation. The
treatises always take into account, that movement or
dance is one amongst many communication techniques.
Indian dance synthesises the techniques of the other
arts, to evolve an art form. This represents the
unceasing rhythm of the cosmos. It is no mere accident
that the culmination of this vision and approach to the
art form was the image of Siva dancing.
The theory of Indian dance cannot be understood in
isolation, without taking into account the world view,
the vision and the total commitment to the principle of
unity and multiplicity. At the level of technique, this
art has to be comprehended as a complex synthesis of the
arts of literature, sculpture, painting and music.
According to the Abhinaya Darpana, the Sangitaratnakara
and other medieval treatises, dancing is divided into
three distinct categories: natya, nritya, and nritta.
Natya corresponds to drama; nritya to gesticulation when
it is performed to song; and nritta corresponds to pure
dancing, where the movements of the body do not express
any mood or bhava.
Indian dancing seeks to depict the perfect point or
moment of balance, along the vertical median
(brahmasutra). So much so, that all movements emerge from
and return to the sama or point of perfect balance, akin
to the samabhanga of sculpture.
Indian dance concerns itself with the movement of the
human form, in direct relation to the pull of gravity.
Such a conception accounts for the absence of great leaps
and gliding movements in the air, so characteristic of
Western ballet. In the latter, a movement in space where
the human form is free from gravity, is emphasised.
Western ballet strives thus to eliminate space, by
covering as much space as possible, whether floor-space
or airspace. It cuts space into chunks of movement, leaps
and floor choreography. These are woven into the most
intricate patterns.
The Western dancer is reaching out into space, vertically
and horizontally, in order to arrest a moment of perfect
dynamic movement. He achieves his perfection and goal by
making geometrical patterns in space, where movement is
conceived as an attempt to be free from gravity. The
Indian dancer on the other hand, attempts the very
opposite the preoccupation here is not with space, but
with time, with the dancer constantly trying to achieve
the perfect pose, to convey a sense of timelessness. The
human form here achieves geometrical shapes in time,
rather than in space, for the intricacy of the nritta
technique depends on the very fine and deliberate
manipulation of rhythm or tala to achieve a series of
poses. The perfect pose is a moment of arrested time in
limited space.
Unlike his or her Western counterpart, the Indian dancer
is not concerned with the musculature of the human form,
but rather like the sculptor, takes the joints and
fundamental anatomical bone-structure of the human form
as its basis. From such a basis, the dancer strives to
achieve absolute form, since the muscles cannot suggest
absolute form, nor create abstract geometrical patterns
easily.
The miming aspect of the natya, termed as angikabhinaya
in the Natyasastra, an aspect of the drama proper, is
also an integral part of dancing. The principles which
govern the angikabhinaya technique of drama (natya), also
apply to the dance (nritya), where it is known as
abhinaya. From amongst the movements of the angas and
upangas, the nritya or abhinaya portion depends mainly on
the gestures of the hands and face.
Indeed, the gesticulation of the hands is the focal point
around which everything revolves. To represent mood
(bhava) or sentiment (rasa), all primary hand gestures
can be used purely imitatively or suggestively these can
be used to convey ideas and emotion, or as symbols. The
hands, along with the movement of the eyes, are employed
in the basic representation or samanyabhinaya, and in the
special mixed representation or chitrabhinaya.
The analysis of music by Western scholars was the
backbone of the development of Western ballroom dancing
and of course ballet. Schenker saw the essentials of
music as the triad and its linear unfolding through
arpeggiation, through passing and auxiliary notes, in
their most abstract form. Only then does it go on to
discuss the forms which these structures might take in
any actual musical context. Schenkerian analysis is in
fact a kind of metaphor, according to which a composition
is seen as a large scale embellishment of a simple
underlying harmonic progression, or even as a massively-
expanded cadence; a metaphor according to which the same
analytical principles that apply to cadences in strict
counterpoint, can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the
large scale harmonic structures of complete pieces. Much
of the technicality and refinement of dance forms of the
West are causative of such analyses, and vice versa.
In the early twenties, modern dance forms started to take
shape in the West, based on classical ballet. In 1926,
Martha Graham (born 1894) developed a technique on the
contraction and release of energy, and a natural
breathing rhythm. In the late twenties, the team of
Humphrey (1895-1958) and Weidman (1901-1975) trained
dancers to demonstrate the energy of movement derived
from the Fall and recovery of balance technique. Everyday
gesture was taken and stretched to the utmost in terms of
energy. Weidman's special contribution lay in the realm
of mimetric gesture, which he called kinetic pantomime,
to distinguish it from acting pantomime.
The new wave came in the forties. Cunningham (born 1919)
was the most radical of this new breed. An iconoclast to
the core he moved the most important and dramatic moments
of his work, away from the centre of the stage. He opened
up the proscenium stage, so that it became a field of
action.
Dances have continuously evolved over time in the West.
It is a scientific and exact art, that looks
synergistically at human expression in its primordial yet
highly refined form. It is a very elemental and truly
universal tool of aesthetic expression.